


The Forces Between Atoms

by Aamalysstuff



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! - All Media Types, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Feels, Atem is a Mage, Breaking Up & Making Up, Fate & Destiny, Human/Monster Romance, Interspecies Sex, M/M, Magic, Magic Monster Sex, Makeup Sex, Mating Bites, Mating Bond, Monsterfucking, Porn With Plot, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Sex, Seto is a Dragon, Sex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24009796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aamalysstuff/pseuds/Aamalysstuff
Summary: There's a haunted castle in the forest surrounding Domino city and it's been claimed as a Dragon Lair by an overly territorial Blue Eyes White Dragon hybrid and his little brother. Like any other self-respecting dragon, Seto enjoys hoarding gold, debating scientific theories and being left alone.Meanwhile - there's also Atem, Dark Mage extraordinaire. He started off on a quest because a clan of fortune-tellers urged him to do so.Unsurprisingly, they meet.
Relationships: Atem/Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Seto/Yami Yuugi | Atem
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55





	The Forces Between Atoms

**Author's Note:**

> So I spent the first part of my quarantine re-watching YGO. As a result, I felt an intense need to write Prideshipping fic for the first time in - pffff. _Ages_. It's a damn shame it took me so long to write something for them, because they were one of my first OTPs back when I was a wee young shipper. 
> 
> Around a month ago, [ Moophinz ](/users/%5BMoophinz_isnt_here%5D/) introduced me to their [AU Idea](https://moophinz.tumblr.com/post/617288162424864768/a-fantasy-au-of-sorts) of writing Seto as a Dragon Hybrid and Atem as a Dark Mage. I asked for their permission to use the idea and write some good ol' Monster/Mage Romance. I had a ton of fun writing Seto-The-Moody-Dragon, so thank you, Moophinz.

There were all sorts of common misconceptions humans held about hybrids and all of them were outdated, biased and inaccurate. They were, after all, observations made by humans who decided to study separate races of sentient beings and generalize their conclusions based on a limited sample pool of test subjects.

Seto still remembered how, in the early days of his youth, when he’d been held captive like some sort of rare trophy, all these men and women gawked at him and poked and prodded at him. All his moves had been studied and all his vital signs recorded – everyone seemed to stare at him and wait excitedly for the moment in which he was supposed to suddenly become less intelligent, as if his IQ was going to drop and he’d turn into a mindless animal driven purely by instinct.

Their conclusion had been predetermined: Seto was a dragon, therefore he was supposed to be always one step away from feral roaring and terrorizing helpless maidens and they had the absolute gall to act shocked whenever they realized Seto was  _ smart. _

To add insult to injury, they kept testing his intelligence so they could disprove it, but whenever they saw him displaying any sort of behavior that was categorized as  _ typical dragon hybrid  _ they would jump at the chance to confirm that he was nothing but an exotic pet.

_ Tsk _ .

He had learned very quickly what sort of behavior he was supposed to abstain from, lest he gave them the satisfaction of having their  _ theories _ confirmed. Seto was a fast learner, he rarely made the same mistake twice and by the time he managed to escape that place with Mokuba in his arms and a fiery hatred for humans branded into his head, he had near impeccable control over his own instincts.

The only  _ typical dragon hybrid behavior  _ he indulged in was the hoarding, but Seto would be quick to argue that while it was common for dragon hybrids to hoard jewels and riches, it was also common human behavior to desire diamonds and gems and crystals. Who  _ didn’t _ like shiny metals?

And sure,  _ some people _ accused him of being overly territorial, but Seto would argue that he was merely protective of the things he  _ earned _ .

While he and Mokuba were on the run, they stumbled upon the abandoned castle of one Pegasus J. Crawford – long since dead, but very much still haunting the premises. They settled before they knew the former owner was still around, casually walking through walls and commenting on Seto’s remodeling choices.

He was so obnoxious. He was  _ such _ a nuisance. Maybe Pegasus’s tactic had been to annoy Seto into leaving this newly discovered safe haven for him and his brother, but they weren’t about to let themselves get bullied into leaving, not while the competition for this place was  _ literally dead _ , not when they had enough space here to live their life in peace. As far as Seto was concerned, this was  _ his  _ castle now and Pegasus the Ghost was the unwelcomed one.

It wasn’t overly territorial to want to have a space for himself without others intruding on him.

Seto had always been hyper aware of his own biology – strong tail and huge wingspan and iridescent white-blue scales and all, he also wasn’t a complete fool. He knew some types of behaviors were dictated by hormones and pheromones, he read all the anatomy books in Pegasus’s library so he could understand how it worked, how  _ he _ was supposed to work.

He had wanted to understand the biological mechanisms that shot through him like arrows sometimes. The only way you could control something was if you fully understood where it came from.

Even if his kind weren’t so notoriously rare, Seto would never stoop so low as to  _ ask _ people about something as basic as his own self, he was going to do his own research. So he read about oxytocin and serotonin, dopamine, how neuropeptides and neurotransmitters worked, how mating bonds were formed because dragon hybrids overly produced those hormones and amino-acids that were responsible for bonding.

It was just the chemicals in their brains that were responsible for those legendary bonds between mated pairs – there was nothing  _ mystical  _ about it, no matter how much it was romanticized.

He remembered when he had that realization, he had been sixteen and sitting on the floor of the massive library within the Crawford estate.

Instantly, Seto’s mind went back to distant, dusty memories of his mother and father, how obviously in love they had been. In his memories, they were always so  _ close  _ to each other, always close enough to touch. He couldn’t have imagined them ever being apart from one another – following each other into death seemed only natural.

Seto had been so young when his parents had died and he hadn’t understood then, but after that midday realization in the Library had happened, two things became clear to him: love was a chemical imbalance and mating bonds a biological anomaly.

However, neither was beyond his comprehension and therefore both were within his ability to subjugate.

He had breathed a heavy sigh of relief as a sense of comforting calmness settled over him. Chemistry was simple – it relied on the laws of conservation, which were clear cut and easy to understand. An abstract concept such as love which was exemplified by a dragon mating bond was an uncertain, volatile force that pushed his parents together beyond reason, beyond logic, responsibility or obligation.

Seto would never be like that because Seto’s sense of self, his rational mind, his responsibilities towards his brother and his sheer determination were always going to be stronger than the biological imperatives and hybrid anomalies that were wrongly believed to be unconquerable. He had been able to tame his instincts while he had been a child, while he knew nothing about them other than the fact that they  _ were. _

As an adult, he had a head start when it came to information and he was aware of his own body as a closed system that he could manipulate into doing whatever he wanted, as long as he understood it.

He remembered his father after his mother had passed, how Seto had never heard anything sound like that, like invisible claws pulled apart his father chest and ripped out his heart, how his roaring grief echoed in the forest, how it was so beyond pain that Seto didn’t even have the words capable to describe the intensity of it. 

He remembered his mother explaining to him how a dragon’s fate was intrinsically tied to that of their mate, how it was supposed to be a sacred bond that was written in their stars. His mother waxed poetics about how the right mate would be able to sooth him when his hypersensitive senses would get overwhelmed, how they would be able to calm the notoriously mercurial dragon temperament, how they would be comfort and home and his center of gravity and stabilizing force.

Even as a child, it had been frightening to think he was meant to allow that one single person to have that sort of power over him.

Then his mother died and she took his father with her and the thought became absolutely unacceptable.

So Seto kept himself aloof and grounded in the knowledge that he could never let himself get nailed to the proverbial cross by something as basic as biology, by a process that he understood and therefore he would be able to control. Seto looked at the trajectory of his life and identified himself as the force with near infinite inertia, consistently moving forward and refusing to accept stutters along the way.

One day, he was sitting with Mokuba in the library and explaining Newton’s Laws of Motion, when Pegasus decided to phase through a wall and butt into conversation, even though no one had asked the damn obnoxious ghost a thing.

“ _ Tsk, tsk, tsk _ , Seto, my boy – Newton’s Laws of Motion are only interesting to study if you discuss them from a philosophical standpoint, not only as a physics subject.”

Seto felt an intense spike in his blood pressure.

“You can’t discuss the laws of motion from a philosophical standpoint, Pegasus. It’s  _ physics _ . Can you take a philosophical standpoint on force equals gravity times acceleration?”

“Oh dear, you don’t understand.” Pegasus rolled his eyes and Seto threw a balled-up piece of paper at him. It went straight through the ghost and for the uncountable times, he really, desperately wished he knew how to exorcise him from the premises.

“Get lost, Pegasus, Big Brother knows better than you.” Mokuba was quick to defend him, though Pegasus wasn’t about to let himself be swayed so quickly.

“I am quite sure your big brother would want to miss out on the lovely debate we could have about this. The classic paradox of unstoppable force and the unmovable object. ”

“It’s called a paradox for a reason, Pegasus. By its very nature, it comes to an illogical conclusion. The unstoppable force and the immovable object have no correspondence to real concepts, it's a semantic bastardization of scientific terminology. The more powerful a force is, the more likely it will interact with all the other fundamental forces.”

“The way an arrow can pass through a shield and through armor and skin.” Mokuba said thoughtfully nodding along, before frowning and saying, “but even that needs to stop at some point.”

“But  _ how _ does it stop?  _ Why _ does it stop? You aren’t considering all these wonderful debating possibilities. Imagine the possibilities – consider the paradoxical nature of mutually excluding abilities. Humans have the story of the dog who is destined to catch everything he chases and the fox that is destined to never get caught. What are you supposed to do with them?”

Pegasus looked at Mokuba while he was asking this question. Seto would have intervened, but he saw his brother was considering the options. While he loathed Pegasus and wasn’t exactly fond of having him around, it was still a classical question meant to develop critical thinking, which he always encouraged in his brother.

“You said  _ destined _ . There’s no such thing as something being  _ destined _ .” Mokuba answered proudly, and Seto felt a swell of pride because his little brother understood and listened to the important things he said.

“The Greeks thought otherwise.”

“The Greeks didn’t know any better.”

“Yet still, the Gods needed to do something with them, they couldn’t let them chase each other forever. They get turned into stones, and the stones are hurled into the sky and there they remain as stars. A sad ending, don’t you agree?”

Seto lips curled into a snarl, almost growling at the sheer ridiculous flamboyance that Pegasus used when narrating. He caught himself before he could yell that dragons had so much better stories to explain  _ their _ constellations, but that would mean admitting that he knew them.

“We were discussing physics, Pegasus. Physics isn’t written in the stars.”

“I would say that is a matter of perspective, Seto, my boy. The laws of physics are as unbendable as if they were put by the Gods in the sky, aren’t they?” the dead man smirked at him and leveled him with an amused stare. “Whether it’s a destiny written by Gods or the laws of motion, if they’re unmovable and unbendable and absolute, what makes them so different?”

“You’re joking, I hope. Sciences are real, they’re certain, while destiny is a word soothsayers use to scam you out of your money.”

“Did you know, Seto, that mages believe every person has a destiny that is as certain as the flow of a river? For them, all the forces of the universe gather around each person and propels them forward to meet their fate head on.”

“Then they are fools.”

“Have you considered they might hold similar beliefs about a man such as yourself?”

He disappeared just then, melting away into the floor as if he was never there, letting Seto stew in unsatisfied anger. He wanted to holler through the house so he could give Pegasus his damn answer, but then again he didn’t want to give the man the satisfaction knowing it bothered him.

* * *

Seto was completely sure that after his parents died, after being captured by Gozaburo’s hybrid hunters, after being held captive for years and finally escaping – after all that happened to him when he had been so young – he was ready to take absolutely anything in stride.

He armed himself with knowledge of things he didn’t know, he made plans and built fail safes and raised walls and defenses and set traps upon traps upon traps, until he was sure that nothing could so much as touch him, much less push him off the course he set out for himself.

And then he met Atem Mutou, Dark Mage Extraordinaire.

Seto had rolled his eyes at him when they first met – mages were not something he was particularly fond of. They were just like regular old humans, only they insisted they knew better because they could conjure up a spell or two from their bag of tricks.

But then again, Atem…

Atem, with his stupid, godawful speeches about faith and destiny and beliefs.

Atem, who listened to him and respected the debates between them, but wasn’t afraid to challenge him in a way that had earnest, genuine  _ goodness _ at its core.

Atem, who was smart and witty and just mean enough that he was fun to talk to and  _ oh, Seto never met anyone like that before. _

Atem had eyes like gems. He wore golden earrings and chains and pendants around his neck, bangles around his wrists and ankles. Whenever he was near, Seto couldn’t focus properly because he kept hearing the soft click-clack of gold against gold, he heard Atem’s footsteps by the movements of his jewelry. In those moments, he searched for him without thinking and his eyes were distracted by the twinkling shine of metal.

Seto’s eyes followed the movement of his earrings, the way the light caught against the gold, how they looked against the skin of his throat. How the golden chain on his neck rested against his collarbones. How the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist was revealed when the bangles he wore moved.

If you look at someone so much, you’re bound to eventually notice other things as well…

The way Atem’s lips curved when he smiled.

How long his lashes were.

How his eyes flashed his fire.

The stubborn line of his brow and the way his nose scrunched when he was angry.

The way he smelled, how a light breeze would ruffle his unruly hair and Seto would catch a whiff of his scent and his mind would go hazy for a few seconds.

Atem’s laughter had the sound of gold coins hitting against each other, an overly full bag overflowing with riches and Seto wanted to steal it off his lips.

Atem infuriated him, Atem excited him, Atem fascinated him.

And Seto? He had read enough to determine what sort of sensations these were.

The increased heart rate and the blushing, the flaring nostrils and dilated pupils, leaning in when they were sharing the same space. The twist in his stomach and the intense hunger to sink his teeth in Atem’s flesh, how he wanted to command Atem’s attention on him and not let him get out of his sight.

All these things were physical markers of attraction, a compatibility that must have been determined by pheromones, by his body responding to Atem’s because they were apparently drawn to each other on a base level.

At first, Seto had tried to stay away from him, but it only made the need worse, like he had to scratch at his skin to keep himself from running straight towards the mage. He wanted to see Atem and the more he denied himself his presence, the worse it got.

How do you feed a need for something you never needed before? Clearly a different approach had to be examined.

If denial was an exercise in futility, Seto told himself, what would happen if he let himself succumb to the impulse of having Atem?

If this was hunger, feeding it might be the optimal solution.

* * *

__

At this point, one must need to remember several established facts -

1 – Dragons were notoriously monogamous, which meant they spent their whole life tied to their chosen mate. Casual sex was a reckless, self-destructive affair, for who would want to tie themselves  _ forever  _ to another person on a whim? Mating bonds were serious business for a dragon. Meanwhile, Seto believed it was a simple chemical reaction, which wasn’t necessarily  _ wrong,  _ though it was also not necessarily  _ right _ either.

2 -Seto was an incredibly brilliant young man, though he was stubborn and refused to accept anything which didn’t fit inside his personal worldview. Said personal worldview was largely determined by research and spending many sleepless nights pouring over old, dusty books. While research and theoretical understanding of how things worked were very, very important, physical reality had the tendency to be a messy, complicated and overly emotional affair. Often, research and plans were rendered useless when one was hit with something new, incomprehensible and fascinating. The expression “hit like a ton of bricks” comes to mind.

3 – The sanctity of mating bonds was common knowledge among dragon hybrids, but dragon hybrids were rare and reclusive. They kept themselves hidden, they went to great lengths to keep their habits and customs hidden from humans. The average human knew about as much about dragon society as they knew about complex brain surgery, and while Atem wasn’t anything as plebeian as  _ average,  _ his knowledge in this particular department was sorely lacking.

4 – Atem was a mage, so he believed that his fate was predetermined and the total sum of his actions were pulling him forward on a trajectory that had an unavoidable finale. He had the confidence and self-righteousness of someone that was absolutely sure of what he was supposed to do, because if it was destined, then it had to be the right thing. However, one that believed everything in his life happened for a reason had a tendency to stop questioning what that reason was, and they also, almost certainly, lacked the foresight to question reasons in others.

These facts would come together and combine into a perfect storm of miscommunication. It  _ could have _ been avoided if Atem had been a bit more skeptical, if Seto had been a bit more open. As it stood, neither of them were anything other than unapologetically themselves, and they came together like magnets, inexplicably drawn to each other beyond any sort of explanation.

* * *

_ Moonlight _ was an inappropriate, incorrect term. The Moon did not give off any sort of luminescence, it was a simple case of sunlight being reflected from the parts of the Moon's surface where the Sun's light hit.

However, while Seto understood that there was nothing particularly exciting about light being reflected off a surface, he had to admit – inappropriately coined or not, moonlight had the tendency to cast very inviting shadows, if you knew were to look for them.

There were shadows all over Atem’s naked body, over each of the nooks and crevices that Seto wanted to press his fingers into. The other man was sprawled across Seto’s bed, sleeping on top of a veritable mountain of pillows and rumpled sheets. There were all these marks scattered across his skin – from when Seto’s clawed fingers clutched at his hips and thighs, from when he sunk his teeth into the curve of his shoulder and his throat and the flesh of his arms, from the way in which he sucked bruises onto every bit of warm, golden bronze skin he could reach while they were….

_ Mating _ ? Mating was a terrible term, full of all these extra romantic connotations of being with your  _ one true mate,  _ which didn’t fit the relationship between Atem and himself at all. Still, whenever he read about his own kind coming together in an intimate physical manner, the word used was  _ mating _ . The human equivalent was something absurd like  _ making love  _ which had the same nauseating effect on him.

_ Engaging in intercourse  _ was technically correct, but it was also incredibly clinical in a way that had nothing to do with Atem clinging to him and wrapping himself around Seto.

_ Fucking _ was a bit too barbaric for his taste, it implied a certain lack of control that he would never associate with himself – Seto was fully aware of the implications of falling into bed with Atem, he understood that there was a certain amount of control that both of them were surrendering when they were together like this, but it was also supposed to be regained the second they finished.

Some hormonal effects were going to linger after that, but nothing he couldn’t keep a tight leash on. He was not some creature that was driven by instincts and biological needs, he was not fucking Atem for the sake of fucking, he had made a very clear and conscious choice that he would be engaging in the act for as long as he wanted, but he could always break free from it.

Atem sighed through softly parted lips and his long, dark eyelashes fluttered open. He blinked away the sleepiness out of his eyes and looked over his shoulder, lips quirking into a grin when he looked at Seto.

On a rational level, Seto was very aware there was a very complex anatomical reaction which caused this heightened sensitivity in him, especially considering he spent the earlier part of the night engaging in intensely physical activities which were meant to stimulate bonding between mated couples. So the tightening in his chest and the hitch in his breath when he saw Atem smiling at him were very easily explained.

“Why are you lurking in the shadows, Seto? Come back to bed, it’s cold without you.”

“You can always magic yourself an extra blanket, I don’t see why I have to act as a heater for you.” Atem always complained about being cold, always refused to dress more, always refused blankets, constantly took advantage of Seto’s naturally higher body temperature to get warm.

He got up from where he was sitting and made his way to the bed, pressed his chest against Atem’s back and buried his nose the mass of unruly, spiky hair. Seto inhaled the scent of him, felt his mouth water and his fingers itching to touch him.

His reasoning when he started this entire experiment with Atem was that maybe it would appease the gnawing, restless feeling in his stomach whenever he looked at the other man. Hunger was appeased by food, but no matter how much he allowed himself to feast on Atem’s body, it never seemed to be enough – he wanted to taste him more and learn him through his taste-buds, sear himself into the other man’s body and leave a scar in the shape of his mouth where everyone could see it.

“I don’t want an extra blanket, Seto.” Atem said, his voice lower and breathier, a small gasp escaping him when Seto touched the bruise on this throat with his thumb. His spine arched and his shoulders relaxed and Seto never thought he would be so fascinated by the discoloration on someone’s skin.

He kept wanting to poke at that bite mark on Atem’s neck. He wanted to keep it as bright purple as it was now, because it was so startlingly arousing to see physical reminders of  _ this  _ outside the confines of Seto’s bedroom. There was a bubble of satisfaction and sheer pride that pulsed somewhere behind his ribs whenever they were outside and he looked at Atem and Atem looked back at him and smiled, and Seto’s eyes would be drawn to his lips and the dimples in his cheeks and he gentle slope of his neck – then he would be reminded of how each part of Atem’s skin tasted, the sounds he made they kissed and the way his nipples felt when Seto pressed the flat of his tongue against them.

It was all together excruciating to be near him, as if Seto’s mind would be allowed no respite from the constant assault on his senses. Between the first time they had sex and now, Seto had hoped things would calm down and he could go back to not noticing the way light caught in Atem’s hair or how his own head got hazy and foggy whenever he was around.

Seto’s tail wrapped itself around Atem’s calf and his wings twitched when the man underneath him laughed and pressed himself completely against Seto’s front.

“Hey, stop being so tense. I can  _ hear _ you thinking.” Atem’s hand reached back and found its way into Seto’s hair, he pulled him forward and turned his head over his shoulder so their lips could meet. It wasn’t the easiest position for kissing, not while Atem was lying on his stomach and had to strain his neck to reach him, because Seto was too tall and he was glued to his back and his fingers were drawing runes and circles over his pulse point.

There was a rhythm to Atem’s body, the strong and steady  _ thump thump thump _ of his heart and his blood pumping through his veins – if it was quiet enough around them, Seto could strain his hearing to focus on the way Atem’s heart beat inside his ribcage. He would feel how his pulse quickened and relaxed.

He purposefully looked for all these places on Atem’s body where his skin was thin and soft, and he could touch his fingers or his lips to them and he’d feel his blood thrumming warmly through him. In those moments, a sense of calm and comfort settled deeply over him, when Atem filled all his senses, and instead of that deep hunger which threatened to burn through him and force him to devour with the sheer force of need, he felt –  _ different _ .

Atem bumped their noses together and playfully bit at Seto’s lower lip. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes and he rolled his hips just  _ so _ , and Seto saw stars.

“You’re hard again.” He commented, and – yes, he was, he was hard again, getting harder still and his cock was settled between Atem’s buttocks. There was a hot flash of warmth across his cheeks at that, because it was one thing for it to happen as a response to the closeness between them, it much more embarrassing for Atem to comment on it so plainly.

“You’re the one that asked me into bed with you! What did you think would happen?” His voice trailed off into a growl, but in the face his mortified anger, Atem arched into him again, wiggled his hips and laughed, all throaty and self-satisfied.

“I admit I was expecting exactly this to happen.” This was followed by a gasp and a shudder, as a Seto ground into him harder, too tongue tied to respond with anything other than a deep rumble from his chest, “Let’s do it again, I like it best when I can feel you inside me.” Atem said it with his eyes closed and his cheek pressed against the pillow, and that was fantastic, because if his eyes were open and looking at Seto while saying stuff like that, the very real risk of having his genius brain pouring out from his ears existed.

Seto thought that nothing could ever frazzle him to the extent that he’d be unable to form coherent sentences – he walked through life confident in his ability to stomp anything in his way with the strength of his will, and he didn’t falter and he didn’t stumble. When he was in bed with Atem, though, he felt like he was knocked off center. Stopping felt like he would cause himself actual, physical pain, the possibility of denying him impossible to comprehend.

It was frightening that a small, spikey haired mage with mischievous eyes and dimples could cause such turmoil, but as Seto took a deep inhale to try to steady himself, he found himself drowning in the smell of Atem – his sweat and arousal and the pheromones coming off him, and more intoxicating still, Seto smelled himself on Atem’s skin. There was a vibration that started resonating in his bones, the bubble of pride and possessiveness inside him swelled again and he thought  _ yes, good, perfect, I want everyone to see that you’re mine, I want them to smell it on you and never even think of coming close to you. _

Fuck.

The only way anyone else would be allowed to look at Atem ever again was if they were going to admire how he was sitting right next to Seto.

His wings were restless against his back and his tail still curled around Atem’s slim leg, Seto started blindly feeling around the bed for the bottle of lubricant that was lost somewhere around the tangle of sheets. He didn't want to move away to find it, he wanted to keep rutting against Atem, he wanted to…oh, where was that…?

There was a smack across his forehead that interrupted his rhythm and made him look up, annoyed – the bottle of lube was…. _ floating  _ right in front of his face.

“Was this what you were looking for?” Atem asked, sounding dreadfully amused by the whole thing. Seto scowled at it, offended.

_ Mages.  _

He was a Blue Eyes White Dragon hybrid – they were rare and regal and dignified, and they never did anything as childish as huffing and sticking their noses up in annoyance. So Seto didn’t do that  _ at all _ , because he was more mature than to fall for that trick. Atem used in magical abilities in such mundane ways that were meant to elicit the maximum effect of annoyance from him.

“I could have found that on my own.”

“Of course you could have, but the face you just made is much more entertaining.”

“You have no idea what face I made.” Seto muttered. He pushed himself away from Atem and sat back between his open legs. 

“You make this face sometime when you’re annoyed – your brows get all scrunched up and your breath goes all huffy and you blush. It’s very cute.”

“I don’t  _ blush. _ ” Seto grunted, feeling the tips of ears burn.

“I forgot, you’re too cool to blush.” Atem’s laugh spilled from his lips as he moved against the bed and folded a leg underneath himself. Seto couldn’t think of anything witty to respond to that, because suddenly his gaze was focused on Atem’s ass, on how his lover pushed two fingers inside to spread himself for…well,  _ for Seto _

It helped that Atem wasn’t shy about his body and knew how he liked to touch himself. He was also comfortable from the start with preparing himself, which was good, because Seto’s fingers had  _ claws _ and human bodies were so much more fragile. The first time Atem saw his cock hard, he stared at it before promptly declaring he was no coward and he was willing to conquer every challenge that stood in his way. Seto knew that Atem was the right choice of partner for this as soon as he proclaimed that dragon dick a challenge worthy of him.

And Seto enjoyed watching him every time – he was mesmerized by the details of Atem’s body as he was gasping and moaning, by the way his fingers would move in and out. He loved how Atem’s skin would flush with pleasure, how sweat would start forming, how the muscles of his back and thighs would tense and relax, how his toes would curl. All these things Seto could appreciate like this, when he could stare at Atem as much as he wanted without feeling like he was giving away some secret by doing it.

His cock throbbed painfully, but he resisted the urge to touch it – instead, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against every bit of skin that he could reach, leaving biting kisses and new bruises along the way. Atem’s fingers slipped out his hole and his body relaxed completely underneath Seto’s attention.

“Seto, fuck me. Come here and kiss me and fuck me already.” It was less of an order and more of a whine, but he threw a look over his shoulder that suggested he was on step away from calling Seto a coward if backed off. “What are you waiting for? I’m not going to break if you do it.”

“It’s not like I  _ care  _ or anything, if you’re so eager to get hurt, then….” Atem promptly shut him up by grabbing his free hand and lacing their fingers together. It took Seto by surprise, then he felt the steady, grounding pressure squeezing his palm. The gesture made him want to press his nose against the shell of Atem’s ear, so he did just that.

“Seto, you’re not going to hurt me.” The confidence and conviction of that statement made arousal spread through him, and some sharp, cutting feeling pierce through his chest hotly. He had no idea what it was, he didn’t want to name this nameless feeling that made his bones ache sometimes when Atem looked at him a certain way, or said something that was  _ just _ what he needed to hear, even if he didn’t know he wanted to hear it.

_ Mages,  _ Seto thought, slightly annoyed at being caught off balance again,  _ it’s not fair that they have a sixth sense for the right thing to say. _ He exhaled sharply, a warm puff of air ghosting over the Atem’s ear and making him laugh.

Seto’s muscles were quivering, he gritted his teeth as he started pushing inside of Atem’s body, grateful that he could squeeze his hand and press his forehead against the crown of his head. He always thought he was going to unravel at the seams when they did this, that he’d burst open with the force of the tempestuous rumble inside his chest and then everything that he was would pour out of him in words and half-coherent sentences, and feelings he didn’t know how to identify, explain or rationalize.

Atem opened up to him and accepted him inch by inch, until Seto didn’t know where he ended and Atem began, until they were so close he wanted Atem to rip open his rib cage and nest there.

“You’re so big,  _ fuck _ , how are you so big?” Atem’s voice was choked and raw, and like he was struggling to put words that made sense together.

“You’re saying embarrassing shit again,” He muttered, closing his mouth around Atem’s throat and biting, because at least one of them needed to have the common sense to stop saying  _ stupid things _ while they were like this.

“What are you talking about? I can’t even think when you’re….” A gasp, and he arched as if trying to bring their bodies even closer together, “ _ Move _ , Seto, fuck, move, you’re…”

Whatever he wanted to say after that was lost in favor of a beautiful, breathless noise that splintered in his throat. Seto started rolling his hips slowly, in that maddening pace he discovered was perfect for pulling out the best kind of noises out of Atem’s mouth.

His body didn’t belong to him anymore. It felt as if Atem had poured himself into all the crevices of Seto’s mind, the spaces between his cells, like he was hard liquor on an empty stomach and Seto was left dizzy, drunk and completely at his service. All the sounds he was making, the way his body shuddered and clenched around his cock, how he squeezed Seto’s hand through it –

Mind blissfully blank, Atem, Atem,  _ Atem  _ was bouncing around his skull.

“Tell me how it feels.” He punctured his request with a deep thrust.

“ _ Perfect _ , you feel…”

There it was, the feeling, the growing pressure and the stab in his chest – the pride and the need and the hunger, the wanting, wanting,  _ wanting _ ,  _ Of course I’m perfect for you, was there ever any doubt? _

There were all these things that were perched exactly on the tip of his tongue.

“You were made to fuck me, weren’t you?”

Atem, Atem,  _ Atem _ , he insisted on always saying things like that, things that cut through the fog in Seto’s head and seared themselves onto his brain and he wanted to roar to the heavens that  _ yes, yes, yes, you’re mine and I’m yours and I was made to fuck you and you were especially made to be molded around my cock. _

__ Atem was perfect, there was no one else who could ever feel this good. The only possible explanation was that they  _ were _ made for each other, anything else was completely out of the question – Seto refused to believe that another creature out there existed that could make him feel like this.

His chest was…

His heart was…

_ Hammering,  _ and swelling, and soaring.

It wanted to burst out of him and tumble uselessly into Atem’s hands, and he couldn’t even find it in himself to care. 

Ever since the beginning, when him and Atem met for the first time, Seto was walking up and down a tightrope that was pulled taunt across an abyss, and whenever they came together like this, bodies slotting together– Seto would slip and he’d fall to the side.

He was falling, falling, falling, infinitely  _ falling _ , useless wings flapping without being able to correct himself, falling without being able to see what he was falling towards.

When he came back to himself, it was a process that happened gradually. First, it was in small bits and pieces - the sweat on his skin, the way Atem’s hair was tickling is nostrils. Then, he realized that his lungs were finally his again and he could breathe properly, his heart was still in its faithful spot, his brain still had the capacity to form thoughts.

He pushed himself off of Atem and sat back on the bed. It was a very reluctant process on his side, Seto didn’t want to pull away from him, but he also didn’t want to squish the other man underneath his weight any longer than it was necessary. Between trying to regain his breath and his mental capacities, Seto looked up at the ceiling. For a second, he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his view and determine what was happening above him.

“Atem?”

“Hmmm?” came the sleepy, tired mumble. It was followed by the sound of shuffling, then Atem turned around and looked for Seto’s hand to wrap his fingers around his wrist.

“There’s…. _ leaves _ . On my ceiling.”

“What?” That made Atem open his eyes, and his eyes stared up at the ceiling, to where small branches were growing out of the wood planks, along with small, bright green leaves that had definitely not been there before.

“Leaves.” He repeated. 

“ _ Oh _ .”

There was a moment of silence between them, in which Seto didn’t quite know how he was supposed to react and Atem just stared.

“I’ve never been able to do that before,” he finally said, his voice low, though there was barely contained excitement there. A huge grin settled on his face and he sat up in bed, held out a hand towards the ceiling. His brows furrowed in concentration, but nothing happened. “I can’t believe I did that unconsciously. I need to learn how to do it  _ consciously _ , too.”

“Atem,  _ explain _ .”

“Seto, I’m a  _ Dark Mage _ . I’m a  _ very _ talented Dark Mage with an extraordinary amount of mana, but I’ve never been able to...” He gestured wildly towards the ceiling. “That’s a healing ability. I’ve never been able to do that before.”

Atem was still grinning when he settled back on the bed. Seto turned on his side so he could look at him, because leaves and branches weren’t really as visually enticing as the way Atem’s cheeks dimpled when he smiled.

“Yugi is a healer, you know. When he was younger, before he got his powers fully under control - if he was happy or excited, flowers started blooming around him or grass would start growing underneath his footsteps.” Atem laughed to himself, before he added, “One time, we went to see our friend Anzu, and she….”

“Who’s Anzu?” Seto asked, a growl all too present in his voice.

“She’s Yugi’s  _ girlfriend _ , Seto,” Atem was a bastard that sounded far to amused when he said that – maybe fondly exasperated was closer to the exact pitch, but it was always a little bit harder for Seto to control his  _ slight _ territorial tendencies when he was tired. “Why do you always assume that whoever I mention from back home, they automatically  _ must _ be some secret past fling?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would I care even if they were?”

Atem turned to look at him, leveled him with a stare that was all too knowing for some reason – then he shook his head without saying anything else and pressed his forehead against Seto’s, rubbed their noses together and the dragon impulses inside him were soothed _just like that_. He didn’t care about any other people that Atem might have liked in the past, he just wanted them all to know that Atem was his _now_.

“Anzu’s our friend, and Yugi’s been in love with her since before he understood what the concept of being in love  _ was _ . When they kissed for the first time, I knew because it was the middle of December and Yugi made all the cherry trees surrounding our magic shop  _ blossom.  _ Everyone thought it was a miracle, cherry trees blossoming in December, but poor Yugi was so embarrassed about it.”

“So what were you able to do? If Yugi the healer made flowers bloom, what did you do that was especially interesting?”

Silence settled between them heavily, as if Atem was uncomfortable with the implications of the question.

“I set the school library on fire once.”

“ _ What? _ ”

“It wasn’t on purpose, Seto! It was an accident!”

“How do you set a library on fire  _ by accident? _ ”

“I’m a  _ dark mage. _ My abilities tend to be more volatile.”

Seto tried to imagine a young Atem – the same unruly hair, same flashing eyes, only smaller and more prone to mood swings. He’d cause chaos and mayhem around him, making things explode when he was angry, on  _ accident _ . Somehow it wasn’t hard at all – the young man that shared his bed had a fierce temper, and Seto liked the idea Atem was just as dangerous as he was. Not a dragon, but magnificent in a way that humans never  _ were _ .

Mages weren’t even a category of humans that Seto enjoyed thinking about. Mages were bafflingly confusing creatures that conjured lightening out of their hands and made branches grow out of his ceiling during sex, apparently. Mages said a huge  _ fuck you _ to the common sense rules of science and existed outside of logic.

Yet Atem…

“Imagine if I had the proper supplies, what if…”

Seto was pulled out of his musings by Atem’s voice, as he was already firing off possibilities and theories about how he could repeat this.

“Proper supplies for what?” Seto asked.

“A ritual, of course. Sex magic is  _ very powerful _ .”

“What?  _ No,  _ we’re not doing any sort of sex magic, Atem. What’s wrong with you?”

Atem didn’t say anything. He raised his eyebrow and pointed upwards, where the newly formed branches and fresh leaves stared innocently down at them. Seto scowled at him, feeling betrayed and annoyed by their very presence.

Tsk.

_ Mages _ . 

* * *

2 –

It was a well known story that Sugoroku Mutou spent the days of his youth on various archeological digs all over the world. A lot of that time was spent in Egypt.

The less known story – Sugoroku Mutou met a woman there. Her name was Zaahira, she was a mage and a fortune-teller, and she was as willful and unbendable as the pyramids themselves. He fell in love with her in a matter of hours and when he offered to marry her, she was absolutely appalled by his suggestion.

“My destiny was never meant to hold room for a husband. I don’t want you to marry me. Go back to Japan, Sugoroku Mutou, you’ll meet a woman there, and she’ll be your wife, and you’ll be very happy with her.”

Sugoroku went back to Japan with a heavy heart, but true to Zaahira’s words, he met his future wife a few months later. They got married, they had children, they lived a happy life together. Years passed, his hair became grey, he got older, he became a grandfather. He thought of Zaahira in passing, as the wild passionate woman she had been when they were both young.

But then, one beautiful spring day, while Sugoroku was in the magic shop with Yugi, a young foreigner came through that door and introduced himself as Atem.

“Grandmother Zaahira told me where to find you.” He offered an explanation, and it was like forty years of missed history all flooded into the shop along with those words. “I came here on a quest to fulfill my destiny and I require your assistance.”

Everyone was admittedly quite shocked about Atem’s existence.

When you already have a teenage grandchild, you don’t expect another, older one to appear overnight. He took comfort in the fact that Yugi and Atem bonded just about instantly and got along like a house fire, so when Atem started living with them at the magic shop, it was less of an obligation and more like a delightfully unexpected surprise.

Atem was extraordinarily intelligent and wielded a frightening amount of power with careless ease. He was a dark mage, the most powerful that ever crossed the threshold of the Kame Magic shop. Sugoroku was grateful every day that the young man had a strong sense of justice and an innate goodness to him, because that amount of power in the hands of someone more ruthless or less understanding would be catastrophic.

Just because he was good, though, did not mean that Atem didn’t cause a fair amount of trouble. His temper was as a blazing thing that  _ surged  _ sometimes, and he blew up things without meaning too, or he got angry and suddenly parts of the magic shop were up in flames. Luckily both Sugoroku and Yugi were healer mages, so it wasn’t that complicated for them to fix things.

Atem was an interesting addition to their family, though sometimes Sugoroku looked at him and his heart ached, because he had a daughter in Egypt that never wanted to know him. He privately wondered what Atem’s mother was like, and sometimes he thought he saw flashes of her in Atem, saw flashes of Zaahira herself in the stubborn set of his brows and the unwavering, unshakeable confidence that the universe had a plan for him.

Atem was completely convinced he was right in all the decisions he took, because his decisions were guided by the force of destiny. If actions and decisions were set in stone, then there was no way they could be  _ wrong.  _ Atem, however, was young, and young people usually found it hard to see beyond the veil of their own beliefs and potential.

Sugoroku just hoped the young man would know what to do with himself after his quest came to an inevitable end.

* * *

Atem had been born in Cairo, on a summer’s day so smolderingly hot that it broke the previous record of highest temperature ever registered in the city. His mother later told him that when he was finally born, after a labor that lasted twenty eight hours, she started weeping inconsolably and the skies outside shattered, blessed rain pouring from the heavens for the first time in months.

Atem grew up surrounded by powerful mages, fortune-tellers and star-readers. Mother, grandmother, Aunts and great aunts, all of them witches that read the fate of men in the stars, in the shifting sands of the deserts and the tea leaves in their cups.

“The destiny of man is written everywhere, if only he’s willing to search for the signs of it.” Grandmother Zaahira told him one day, “Destiny is inevitable, it’s as sure and steady as the flow of the Nile. The only thing you can do is embrace it and let yourself get carried by the stream of it – if you choose to fight it, your fight becomes as useless as holding sand in the palm of your hand.”

So Atem learned that destiny was unbendable, unchangeable, unavoidable. That was a thing he knew with the same surety and certainty as he knew that an apple you threw in the air would fall back into your outstretched hand.

Destiny was a force as sure and steady as gravitation for Atem – a mage as powerful as he was, with so much raw mana, he felt potential in the air when he walked into a room. It tasted sweet and heavy on his tongue, it made his skin tingle with the possibilities that could unravel in front of him. Sometimes, he knew that fate was moving and unravelling around him because he felt tingles on his skin and butterflies in his stomach.

His mother and grandmother were the ones who knew how to interpret the signs of fate, but Atem was so acutely in tune with the stings of it that he felt them as a physical presence, he felt them touching him and caressing him, like he was moving walking through spiderwebs which each step. And sometimes, he felt them in his stomach, he felt destiny clawing at his insides and pulling at him like hooks, he felt as restless as a sand storm when his own potential was close enough to feel it in the air, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

Case in point:

When Atem was fourteen, his mother and grandmother and a whole cackle of aunts and great-aunts told him it was time for him to learn about his path in life. It was important was any coming of age ceremony – young mages like him read their fortunes, and then they spent their life searching for signs and omens about how the stars would align for that future to come into fruition.

So all these people that Atem trusted implicitly got together for him and told him to drink a sweet concoction that made him dizzy and opened up his mana so they could analyze the  _ potential _ flowing through him. Atem didn’t remember anything about the ritual, he only remembered himself, floating through the dark skies.

In this dream of his, Atem was jumping from one start to the other, until he tripped on one of them and started falling through the constellations. He wasn’t scared though, because he fiercely, absolutely and completely trusted in the fact that someone would catch him before he fell to the ground.

So Atem kept falling, and falling and  _ falling _ , he kept falling for days and weeks and months and years, and he all the while in the back of his head was the certainty that he was falling towards someone that would break his fall before he crashed.

He told his mother and grandmother about it, and both of them laughed at him.

“That’s a romance written in the stars, my dear.” His mother told him with a soft smile.

“When you stumble upon something like that,” grandmother Zaahira had told him, “You just  _ know _ . It feels like all the forces of the universe have aligned from you and everything simply clicks into place, like an overwhelming sense of calm settling over your bones. You have to be patient for it, but when you meet them, you  _ know _ .”

When he got older, Atem left Egypt.

He got on a plane from Cairo to Domino because the stars he saw in his dreams night after night were not the same as the ones twinkled year-long above the Egyptian skies. The constellations he was falling through were constellations that were only visible year-round from Japan, so that had been a clear sign that he needed to move there if he wanted to progress in his fated quest.

When he told his mother and grandmother, both of them had been expecting it and they took the news as if they were already prepared for it. They probably both were, talented fortune tellers had the tendency to know things like that in advance.

“You’ll go to Domino City, search for the Kame Magic Shop and tell Sugoroku Mutou that Zaahira sent you. He’s going to be very shocked that you’re his grandchild just as much as the other one is, but he’ll welcome you regardless – he’s a nice man like that. And trust me, Atem, the next time we’ll see each, you’ll  _ understand _ .”

Grandmother Zaahira was amazing, but she was also cryptic and incomprehensive – her fortune-telling gave her near-omniscience in matters of fate, but she was rarely if ever willing to share it with the rest of them. She wouldn’t let him leave if it wasn’t for his own good, though, so Atem smiled at her and hugged her and trusted that she gave him the right address to find this Sugoroku Mutou who was apparently also his grandfather.

Fate worked in incomprehensible ways, and Grandmother Zaahira was never the one to clarify much – but she was always right. When he walked over the threshold of the Kame Magic shop, he met his Grandfather and his Cousin Yugi and it felt like pieces of a puzzle were coming together smoothly and perfectly. 

* * *

Life with Yugi and Sugoroku at the Magic shop was easy and fun. He made friends easily, he got to improve his Japanese, he teased Yugi about the cherry blossom trees blooming whenever he and Anzu another crashed through another relationship benchmark together.

Then one morning, when Atem was 9,600 miles away from Cairo and living on the other side of the planet, he woke up feeling a tingling in his bones and an unexpected bubble of anxiousness in his chest. The room he had in the Mutou household felt stifling and hot and there was something wrapped around his spine that pulled him out of his bed.

”Do you feel that?” He went to Yugi early in the morning so he could ask him,  _ do you feel that, do you feel how thickly fate is wrapping itself around your throat, or is this just me? _

“What am I supposed to feel?” Yugi asked him, confused and bewildered, huge eyes blinking sleepily up at Atem.

“I suppose it’s nothing.”

It was just him, then, his destiny and his possibilities that were coiling around him, refusing to be ignored.

He waited a day, he waited another, until there was no waiting anymore and Atem thought his lungs might collapse if he didn’t go out to search for that elusive feeling, that clicking of pieces slotting perfectly, flawlessly into place. He had no idea what exactly he was looking for, but he was sure steps would take him in the right direction.

_ Who are you? Where are you? What are you _ ? Atem’s brain was reeling with questions, his stomach was bubbling with excitement. Possibilities were swimming around him, floating in the air surrounding him and waiting for him to snatch them out of thin air.

Atem was drunk on the possibilities around him, dizzy from the spinning of the Earth, the movement of the stars.

People who had less faith in their own instincts would say Atem ended up getting lost in the forest surrounding Domino – this was not true. 

Atem knew he was walking towards something important; it just took longer than usual to get to it.

Eventually, Atem wandered too close to the haunted grounds of the Crawford estate and met face to face with a  _ dragon _ .

Not an actual  _ dragon _ , but rather, a dragon hybrid with blue eyes and white wings and a twitching tail, sharp claws on his fingers and pointy teeth. He roared in Atem’s face and used his considerable size to loom over him menacingly. Or rather – it would have been menacing, and terrifying, or at least enough to put Atem on guard, yet….

Atem’s heart was racing wildly in his chest and his stomach was twisting, but then it was as if his head had been underwater and finally he was able to break through the surface of it. He was left breathless with the force and pressure of air filling his lungs, but the sensation of it – as foreign and as intense as it felt – was also unexpectedly  _ pleasant _ .

He was overwhelmed with warmth and happiness was bubbling in his stomach like frothing champagne. There was no reason for this to happen, except that a calm, comfortable stillness settled over his body, and it made the whole world seem soft and blurry around the edges. The only thing that seemed sharp and focused was the dragon roaring in his face, and these astoundingly blue eyes that were glaring at Atem.

His mouth was moving and words were definitely being said, but Atem wasn’t registering them.

“Did you feel that?”

Atem asked him, still slightly dazed, his mind struggling to understand what was happening to him.

_ Please say yes,  _ he wanted to ask the other,  _ please say yes. Say you felt that. Tell me you felt it too. _

“Either you turn around and leave, or I’ll make sure you'll never be able to walk anywhere ever again.”

Atem sighed, dreadfully disappointed that this being in front of him could pull at the strings of Atem’s fate so forcefully that it left him reeling, yet he was so oblivious to the magic strumming around them.

Well….

Not  _ everyone _ was as in tune with the forces of the universe as Atem was. He couldn’t fault anyone for being magically ignorant.

Atem frowned, trying to figure out what would be the best way to approach this situation. 

“I’m losing my patience here, waiting for you to say something. No matter, I’ve made up my mind about this.”

And the dragon tried attacking him then, rushing towards him with outstretched claws and exposed fangs. However, Atem wouldn’t be a mage worth his salt if he wasn't able to counteract such an obvious move, so he simply raised his hand, breathed a spell under and the attack was halted, the dragon hybrid found himself completely immobilized, his muscles locked in place. His eyes widened in distress as he was struggling to fight against Atem’s spell.

Fated meeting or not, Atem wasn’t about to let himself overpowered like that over a misunderstanding.

He walked forward and looked at the dragon, and Atem was struck with how  _ blue _ his eyes were, and how beautifully the sun caught on the white, glimmering scales that were scattered his face like freckles.

And he was still glaring at Atem, anger bubbling and flashing in his pretty blue gaze. By now he should have realized there was no way in hell he would be able to break through Atem’s spell, but he was still struggling against it.  _ He’s so stubborn _ , Atem thought, feeling a bubble of warmth bursting happily in his stomach.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” he said smoothly, “I’m not here to hurt you or cause any trouble, so there was no need for you to attack me. However, you couldn’t have known the nature of my intentions, so I understand why you felt the need to defend yourself.”

If looks could kill, Atem would have been obliterated by now. Luckily, looks were just that, and Atem was perfectly safe, gazing up at a face that was too expressive even when he couldn’t so much as twitch. There was a twist somewhere behind his ribs, a little stab to his heart. Atem frowned, suddenly feeling guilty that he was causing the other distress, enough though he had been attacked first.

It was the eyes, definitely, and Atem never thought he’d be caught off balance by someone looking at him with that exact mixture of hurt pride and anger, but here he was.  _ Stop looking at me like that,  _ Atem wanted to yell at him,  _ it’s your own fault for rushing at me. _

“Let’s start over, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, I promise, but you also have to promise you won’t attack me again. Deal? Blink twice for yes.”

There was a low, rumbling growl coming from the dragon, and Atem was impressed that he could still do that. If he wasn’t immobilized, the low growl would have been a roar, surely. Atem shook his head, amused.

“My name is Atem, by the way. I’d like to know your name too.” He smiled at him in a way that he hoped would be comforting. “I’ll let you go now, alright? I want you to know I don’t mean any harm.”

Atem snapped his fingers and the spell was released. He saw a whole rainbow of emotions spreading themselves across the other’s face; his lips twisted and snarled in interesting ways, his eyebrows twitched and  _ there it was _ , the angry roar that ripped through his chest.

“You’re a damn  _ mage _ ,” he spit in Atem’s face, but at least he didn’t attack him again.

“And you’re a Blue Eyes White Dragon.” Atem countered. “Are we supposed to state the obvious now?”

“I hate  _ mages _ .”

“ _ Ah _ , that’s a shame. I was looking forward to making your acquaintance.” Atem’s lips quirked into a half smile.

The other man stuck his nose up at Atem and huffed a breath, haughty and annoyed like he was some sort of princeling and Atem was a poor peasant bothering him. The effect would have been much more impressive if Atem wouldn’t have been able to see the angry pink flush on spreading across his cheek. He turned on his heel and started walking away.

Atem should have been annoyed at being so easily dismissed, but in turn, he was only…. _ intrigued  _ by this behavior. His feet started moving, his body propelled him forward and before he was even aware of what he was doing, Atem was following the dragon hybrid. 

* * *

As far as first meetings went, theirs was a particularly memorable one.

* * *

Atem  _ liked _ Seto, prickly, moody creature that he was.

He kept visiting him, despite all the protest he got from Seto about how his presence was unwanted – Atem didn’t really believe that, not when he always got that pleasant tingling in his stomach when he was next to him. Atem’s mana reached out to Seto, excited and happy to be near him, like he was a walking, talking ball of rumbling magical lifeforce.

Atem had been taught from a very early age that his instincts were always right, and he should trust what they were saying, what the natural energy around him was whispering to him. He had enough confidence in himself not to second guess everything that was happening, and he believed himself patient enough to coax Seto out of the gloomy, dark lair he built around his heart.

The process was troublesome. A one step forward, two steps back sort of situation, with a lot of sidestepping.

The process was also extremely frustrating, because Atem wanted to grab Seto by his shoulders and shake him –  _ don’t you feel it? How can you not feel it _ ? Sometimes it felt like he could hardly breathe around Seto, because the air between them was so alight that his lungs hurt from it.

“Have you considered simply… _ telling him _ ?” While he was telling Yugi about his dragon induced dilemma, his cousin came up with a solution that was, in all honesty, quite baffling for Atem.

“Tell him  _ what?  _ I don’t want to tell him, Yugi, I want him to  _ know _ .”

“And isn’t that what you will achieve by telling him?”

Atem frowned and shook his head, wondering how he was supposed to explain fortune and certainty to someone that wasn’t raised around fortune tellers.

“He’s supposed to instinctively  _ know _ , he’s supposed to feel it just as real as I do.”

“Have you considered that he feels it too, but maybe he’s not aware of how to interpret it? Not everyone is as in-tune with this sort of thing as you are, and you did say he is not magically... _ competent _ .”

Some things were as natural to Atem as breathing was.  _ This _ was one of them – he thought that if he exposed Seto to his presence for longer periods of time, he would, eventually, get a clue. He had hoped that Seto would eventually cave under the pressure of Atem’s steady presence, the natural pull of the occult energies surrounding them working in his favor.

“I need to rethink my strategy.”

“Or maybe you can just tell him?”

“I can’t  _ tell him _ . Not yet. I can’t. No, he needs to be the one doing the first step, because….”

Well.

_ Why _ ?

It racked at the back of his mind, this intense need to be right. Because if Seto made the first move, then it naturally meant that Atem was right, his instincts were right, he really was on the right track, he was…

What if he was not right? What if Atem was the only one feeling like this? Was if he interpreted this wrong? What if there was something he was missing?

What if he made a damn fool of himself?

How did any of this even work?

“You know, Atem, not everyone has a skeleton key on how to decipher their future, nor do they instantly feel they're  _ supposed  _ to fall for someone. For most people, it’s a process. You have to give it time.”

“Yes,  _ but how much time _ ?”

“As much as it takes, I guess.” Yugi smiled sadly at his frustrated face, and Atem resigned himself that he was into this waiting game for the long run. “Maybe learn how to read people, rather than  _ mana _ , I’m sure there’s definitely  _ signs _ .”

_ Signs _ .

So maybe Yugi was right, maybe he was looking at this the wrong way.

Maybe Seto’s feelings simply vibrated on a different frequency that Atem’s did, maybe he just didn’t know how to interpret them. Either way – patience would be needed. So Atem decided, he might as well make himself comfortable within the limitations of this dance they were playing with each other.

* * *

He invited himself into Seto’s castle, met his little brother and the resident ghost. The place was so haunted and radiated such intense occult energy that it made a shiver run down Atem’s spine.

“How can you live here like this?” He asked Seto, and a loud growl emitted from the dragon.

“Pegasus is harmless, Atem. He just…. _ appears _ ….from time to time. ” Mokuba explained, tail swishing behind him.

“I could put him to rest, you know. My speciality is not necromancy and ghost whispering, but he doesn’t seem to be malevolent enough to require much force.”

That was the exact moment in which Pegasus himself appeared through the wall, arms crossed over his chest, a frown on his face.

“ _ How dare you?  _ ” the ghost said, a woefully, melodramatic shiver in his voice. “First, I have to see  _ my _ beautiful home fall into such a terrible state…”

“You’re dead, this place is  _ mine _ now.” Seto countered, but Pegasus paid him now mind, floating around the room and ranting,

“Then, I have to sit back and watch while  _ my domain _ is being invaded by someone so uttely  _ tasteless…. _ ” Some sort of porcelain globe went right through Pegasus.

“ _ Your domain _ ? Your domain? Don’t make me laugh…”

“Big brother would totally kick your ass if you were alive.”

“Tasteless, and  _ a brute _ , this how I spend my days. And now a short mage that isn’t even allowed to drink yet wants to  _ exorcise me?” _

“You absolute snob, you never lifted a finger in your damn life and you criticize  _ me?” _

The yelling and shouting around him would have been fine, Atem wasn’t a stranger to chaos. However, the combination of Pegasus’s occult energy and Seto’s angry, rolling energy….it was all giving him a terrible headache.

So really, he had to do  _ something _ .

“Mister Crawford, I am deeply sorry for this, but I’m afraid your presence is much too distracting for me.”

Before the ghost had the chance to say anything, Atem banished him to the other side of the house.

“Did you just get rid of him?”

“He’s fine, I promise. I just banished him to the other side of the house while I’m here. ”

Seto and Mokuba looked at Atem, and then at each other, like neither of them ever considered that was a possibility.

So started the journey in which Atem guided two dragon brothers through the wonderful mundane possibilities of Magic.

He charmed the brooms to sweep on their own and made the garden tools self-sufficient, put continuous spells on objects so they would automatically go back to their place whenever they were left haphazardly around, and magicked snacks whenever he felt like it. It was always tremendously amusing to see the looks he got for whatever normal, magical things he did.

And really – once he stopped expecting something immediate and major to happen and started focusing on getting to know Seto, he started noticing all these  _ things _ about him that he liked so much.

How smart he was and how bone dry his humor was, how much he cared about his brother and how passionately he felt emotions. How elegantly he moved, the way his lips snarled when he growled, how the scales on his skin shined. Atem wanted to run his fingers over those pretty, shimmering scales so he could test their texture.

And then one day, when Atem wanted to steal a glance at Seto, he caught Seto staring at  _ him.  _ They made eye-contact, both of them slightly startled while for about a half second – Atem’s split second decision was to continue staring, because he caught Seto looking at him so he had no reason to back down or feel ashamed for his interest. Atem kept eye contact and gave him a little half smile.

The effect was magnificent to observe up close. Seto’s eyes widened about a fraction – all clear, beautiful blue for Atem to get lost in them – and then looked away, cheeks looking pink. Atem wanted to press his fingertips against that blush and see if he could make it turn brighter.

* * *

There was a very long time in which nothing happened, and then everything started happening all at once.

Seto avoided him for weeks, foul mood thundering whenever Atem was around, tail coiled tightly against his own leg, wings twinging angrily. Atem wasn’t exactly sure what was going on with him, but whenever he did pick a fight, he made sure to respond in kind. If Seto wanted to be a roaring dragon that yelled out his anger and frustrations in Atem’s face, then Atem would shout right back at him.

It seemed like his simple presence was enough to infuriate the other, and an angry dragon had the tendency to start growling and rumbling, and his handsome face twisted into something much more cruel and threatening.

Atem didn’t feel threatened though – if anything, the fighting was interesting and exhilarating. Seto was, after all, a dragon hybrid and they were as close to indestructible as it got in nature. Seto also seemed completely magically immune, which meant that Atem, for the first time in his life, wasn’t afraid of the effect his magic would have on another person. Seto wasn’t going to choke because of the sheer, oppressive force of Atem’s mana when he got angry, he wasn’t going to spook away whenever something casually exploded, he wasn’t wary of Atem’s mood swings, he seemed to rejoice in the cathartic burn of feelings.

Atem wanted to kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him, kiss him until his mouth hurt and then maybe a bit more. Seto was so stupidly reckless and stubborn that he absolutely didn’t care about the potential damage Atem could do, he just wanted to be  _ right _ . Atem was charmed.

And really, whenever they were close to each other, Atem would feel anticipation bubbling in him, bright and excited and dizzying. It was lovely and painful at the same time, this longing for uncharted exploration that was staring him right in the face, but his self-imposed principles weren’t allowing him to bridge the gap between them.

It was a sweet kind of torture that he wanted to drag out indefinitely and end it  _ yesterday,  _ because he enjoyed feeling Seto’s eyes heavy on his skin, yet he craved something more that was indistinguishable and amorphous in his mind.  _ What do I want and what am I supposed to ask for _ ?

The obvious answer was sex, but sex was a final step in a process and it was that process that Atem didn’t have the proper words to define. If sex was the conclusion, what was the problem they were supposed to address?

Then one night, Atem found himself staring at the dark sky – he was supposed to go back to Yugi and Sugoroku, but he was having a hard time leaving Seto alone. As a result, he was just loitering around, staring at the heavens, eyes drawn to the constellation that he dreamt of so many times as a child.

“See that constellation up there?” Atem said, pointing above his head. “You can’t see that Egypt, but I remember dreaming about these stars. I knew I had to come here if I wanted to find out what the future had in store for me.”

The night breeze was ruffling his hair and sending goosebumps over his skin. Next to him, Seto snorted inelegantly

“You saw  _ The Stabilizer _ in your future? How  _ romantic _ .” His voice was dripping with sarcasm, but Atem turned to him, a frown on his features.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

Seto stayed stubbornly silent and didn’t explain himself and Atem felt like there was something he was missing, some information he didn’t have which Seto was holding close to himself.

“Seto?”

When Atem called out his name, the dragon turned to him – there was a frown on his face, a tension around his eyes, and Atem thought there was a troubling storm thundering behind his handsome features. It made something inside his chest ache and twist, he wanted to reach out and comfort him even though he wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to conform to. Atem shook his head.

“I don’t like it when you look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?” Seto asked, voice a little mean, but not  _ cold. _

“Like I’m hurting you.”

And that took him by surprise, Atem saw it – how it froze on his face, around his mouth. Those eyes did strange things to Atem, because Seto’s gaze could be so cutting and sharp, but always saw underneath that, to rolling, coiling emotions deep in the center of it. Just as quickly as it came, surprise passed.

“Don’t be stupid,” Seto said, and his voice was raw and Atem wanted to tell him,  _ Seto, you’re a damn liar,  _ but he didn’t get the chance to.

Seto’s mouth was on his and he was chasing the words from Atem’s lips with his tongue. There was a soft, falling sound between them, a sigh that came from Seto when he pulled back, and it called to him in a way that he couldn’t explain, except…

Oh, he couldn’t  _ not kiss _ him, not when he sounded like.

So Atem dived into it, pressed forward, mouth, and lips and tongue, he wanted, he wanted….

Ah, there it was, again, that beautiful, falling breath, he kissed it off Seto’s mouth and felt it in himself, the falling, the tumbling, the drop.

It felt so natural to kiss him, to touch him, to be touched by him, like it was only an extension of what they were together, but it was so  _ smooth _ . Seto was inside him and on top of him, and he felt huge, like a whole universe that was just for Atem to explore. Seto hid his face against the curve of Atem’s throat and bit into his neck as he came, and it sent a shock of feeling through his whole body.

Seto pressed his fingers against the bruise afterwards, pressed into it and the soreness of it made Atem shudder.

* * *

_ Baklava, Lokmet el Kadi _ and  _ Balah el Sham _ – sweets that were dipped in honey syrup, they dripped over your fingers. While he was growing up, Atem used to steal them from under his mother’s nose, because he was never allowed to have as many as he would like.

“You’ll get sick if you eat them on an empty stomach,” His mother used to say, but Atem hardly believed her, until one year, when he got the chance to gorge himself on as many treats as he could.

They were so good, they were perfect, the syrup clung to his lips and his teeth ached from it, he ate  _ so many sweets,  _ until he got sick, until his stomach hurt, until they weren’t sweet anymore, until he couldn’t taste anything anymore, until he got sick from it. Mother had chastised him, but Grandmother Zaahira only laughed. 

“You can have too much of a good thing, my dear. Even honey starts tasting bitter if you eat too much of it.”

For Atem, it took a whole year for him to even look at another Lokma, never mind eat one, and he still wasn’t too fond of eating them. It was a lesson learned.

However, he could never forget the satisfaction he had felt when faced with all the sweets he loved and no one to stop him from eating them. It was perfect, exquisite, the best thing ever, he could just take as much as he wanted – but there was also the urgency of it, the feeling that any minute mother or grandmother could come back and they would take the treats away from him.  _ Take, take, take, more, more, more. _

It was like  _ that _ .

Once they started, they couldn’t stop.

If Atem and Seto inhabited the same space together for more than twenty minutes, they were most likely going to end up fucking.

Atem wasn’t even sure what triggered it most of the time, but it happened nonetheless – it was in the way light streamed through the window and made him want to touch Seto’s face, how Seto sat next to him and he felt his body heat, their finger accidentally brushed each other and they couldn’t stop. Why would they? It was all  _ more, more, more _ .

“Kiss me more”, Atem demanded, one early morning when sunlight was streaming through the window. Then, later that day, they were sitting in the Library when Atem went over to Seto, sat in his lap and demanded his attention be focused on him.

Seto was the type that had no idea how to ask for pleasure but was resolutely determined to drown Atem in it. It was amazing how dedicated he was to getting Atem off as many times as he could, and that was the sort of attitude which forced you to raise to the occasion.

Plus, it was _ fun. _

It was  _ so fun. _

Clearly orgasms were fun, there was no denying that Atem was grateful for every one of them, but it was also just fun to explore things together. Neither of them had any sort of experience with sex before this, so it was all experimenting and testing to see what worked.

Atem had been left a little bit speechless when faced with Seto’s cock for the first time. The biggest question in his head had been “ _ How is that even supposed to fit?”  _ but apparently you could accomplish anything you wanted with willpower and enough preparation beforehand.

Then the first time he tried giving a blow job, he most certainly choked, gagged and coughed his way into a mouthful of cum. He had a sore throat afterwards. It was messy and inelegant and awkward, but it was also completely worth it, because he discovered –  _ things. _

The sort of noises you could pull out of Seto, how red his face turned, how dazed his eyes got.

How he pressed his face into the pillow afterwards and refused to look at Atem.

Fun things like that.

It was hard to keep their hands off each other - when Mokuba was around, when Pegasus was in one of his rare un-banished moments, when Atem was supposed to go home. 

There were moments in which Atem wondered if he was going crazy, when he had to force himself to leave Seto so he could go back to the magic shop. It was always a terribly painful affair, because Seto didn’t  _ ask  _ Atem to stay, but Seto also didn’t want to let him go.

Atem left reluctantly, with pleasant marks on his body, buzzing with energy, dazed and drunk and dreamy. He laid in his bed at night, all alone, pressed his fingers against the bite mark that was always present on his throat and felt goosebumps rising across his skin.

_ I already miss him,  _ and he missed the way Seto touched him and kissed him and looked at him. Seto looked at him like Atem wasn’t real, like he had to always touch him to make sure he was there. All the fucking and biting, the fighting and the powerful attraction between them, and Seto still looked at him like he wasn’t sure if Atem was real or not, could he be real, how could he be real and in his bed at the same time.

Atem wanted to leave the shape of himself branded on Seto’s body, across his heart and soul, so he could never doubt him ever again, Atem wanted to touch him all over with sticky fingers so he could mark Seto just as possessively as Seto marked him.

One night, when they were together in bed and Atem was riding Seto’s cock, he heard this lovely, amazingly broken sound coming from his lover’s mouth and he bent down to kiss him, to kiss him back together again. Seto himself clung to Atem as he came inside him, and afterwards he looked at Atem as if he had just poured breath back into his lungs.

He was so…handsome and beautiful and made for Atem, they fit together so well that there was no other explanation for it. The realization that he  _ loved  _ was so obvious, it settled into Atem comfortably and cozy, nestled between his ribs and wrapped around his heart.

It was settled  _ so _ easily for Atem.

He loved Seto and he would be proud to say so and throw it around as much as possible. Atem had never been in love before, but looking back at their meetings, at all the moments they were together, and the entire scope of their relationship, it just made so much  _ sense _ .

Perfect.

Yes.

He loved Seto, and he was confident and secure in the knowledge of it, calm and accepting of this, thought about it with the same sincere clarity as if it was a fact as well known as “the sky is blue” or “water is wet.” 

For all intents and purposes, Atem was not the problem in this –

Seto was.

* * *

A fight is a fight, a disagreement, a misunderstanding, failure to understand effective and efficient communication. All couples fight.

Atem and Seto fought all the time, it was written at the very basis of their relationship. They fought and disagreed with each other as easily and smoothly as breathing, as naturally as they fucked and just as often.

However, not all fights were created equal. There was a fight, and there was  _ The Fight. _

__

* * *

__

“You know I had a very interesting conversation with Pegasus in the library today, Seto. You know what he did? He  _ congratulated _ me.”

“You need to hang out less with Pegasus, Atem. You know that good for nothing ghost just causes trouble.”

“But you know what he said, Seto? He congratulated me on being  _ mated,  _ and I thought, that’s an odd word to use, isn’t it?”

“Atem – ”

“No, see, it’s an odd word to use, because I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, so I asked him about it.”

“Pegasus has not idea what he’s talking about – ”

“He said it’s like being married.  _ Married _ . I’m not married. We’re not  _ married _ .”

“It’s not being married, it’s nothing like it…”

“Because I expect you would tell me – you would let me have a  _ choice _ in it.”

“Being married is a  _ human _ concept, mating is more a chemical bond, it’s completely different.”

“Seto, you’re missing the point on purpose”

“I’m not missing the point, you’re missing the point!”

Silence. Ringing and profound.

“He didn’t lie, not about this. You hid this from me. You specifically,  _ actively _ hid this from me. Why?”

“It’s a stupid concept, it’s outdated and it doesn’t matter to me.”

“But it matters to  _ me _ .”

“ _ Why _ ?”

“Because you went and tied us together without asking me about it. Because you treated me like something you could take when I gave you space and gave you time to choose me, you took away my choice. I would have still chosen you,”

“I didn’t take away anything – you’re still free to leave.”

“That’s not the  _ point _ , Seto. I didn’t want to end up in a Dragon Marriage by  _ mistake _ .”

“It’s not a Dragon Marriage,  _ I told you _ , it’s a  _ chemical _ bond, there’s no romance behind it. Just let it go, it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re not listening, it matters  _ to me _ .”

“And you have given me no real reason why it matters to you so much to understand outdated concepts such as a  _ mating bonds _ .”

“Because I want to understand? Is it not good enough? Because I love you, Seto.”

And really, there was no grand, extraordinary way to say it, because it wasn’t some sort of grand extraordinary thing for Atem to say “ _ I love you, Seto _ ,”. It was as simple as breathing, eating. Atem felt it, so he said it, mindlessly and thoughtlessly and carelessly, because it wasn’t a big deal and it was obvious.

_ Wasn’t it? _

“What did you say?”

“Why are you looking at me like that, Seto?”

“You don’t, you  _ can’t _ . It’s  _ stupid _ , anyways, it’s…”

“My feelings for you aren’t  _ stupid _ .”

“There’s no basis for them, apart from the fact that we share…what? We fuck and that makes you feel attached to me?”

“That was cruel.”

“It was  _ real _ . Feelings like that have no basis in reality.”

“That’s narrow minded. Can you really tell me you wouldn’t feel anything if I left?” 

“Oh, but you wouldn’t leave, would you? You just told me you  _ loved _ me.  _ Tsk _ .” His tail swished loudly.

“That’s not what I asked. Answer me. Tell me. Can you tell me you wouldn’t feel anything if I left?”

“You know where the door is, Atem. I was fine before I met you, I’d be fine without you”.

“You’re so unwilling to admit you feel something for me, that you’d hurt without me that….You would be willing to let me leave just to prove me wrong? When I know that you lo-….”

“What? What do you know, Atem? I’m not responsible for any wild ideas you believe about me, they are entirely of your own making.”

“That’s not true. I  _ know _ you.”

“You don’t. If you knew me, you’d know not to say stupid shit around me.”

“It’s precisely because I love you and respect you that I’m unwilling to let you dishonor both of us by lying to yourself.”

“If you’d love me, you…”

“ _ Don’t _ . Whatever you want to say, Seto, take care with it.”

There was a rumble outside, a terrible thunderstorm that was picking up. Howling wings, thunder and lightning.

“Or what?”

“If I leave, I’m not coming back until you ask me to.”

“If you leave, it just proves my point.”

“Point? What point does it prove, Seto?”

And Atem looked at him and saw the change of it on his face, the surprise, the short moment of wavering, the hesitation during which Seto’s brilliantly blue eyes flashed at him. Atem had caught him off guard, like the words had slipped out of his mouth without filtering him, and now he was left raw and having to justify himself for something he wasn’t prepared for.

It lasted less than a second, and Atem wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t known what to look for.

“Ask me to stay. Tell me you want me here. Ask me not to leave.”

“You can do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care to indulge in your temper tantrum.”

So that was that.

And Atem understood that it was hard for Seto to be honest with himself, it was hard for Seto to let himself be vulnerable, it was hard for Seto to accept that feelings weren’t a design flaw that needed to be squashed, Atem understood _all_ _that_.

Atem was also pissed, self-righteously so, because Seto was  _ stupid _ , and childish, and so damn stubborn. And Atem wanted to teach him a lesson, that you can’t do whatever you want without consequences. If Seto wanted to play this particular game, this –  _ I dare you to leave, see you’re too much of a coward to do it – _ Atem wasn’t going to back away from it.

And Atem wanted to punish him a little.

Because Atem would choose Seto in a heartbeat, with his eyes closed.

Seto didn’t bother acknowledging his own feelings, Seto denied that Atem loved him and wasn’t that just insulting? You love someone enough to get a dragon married to them, but then you wave it away like it’s meaningless. It was insulting to  _ both of them _ .

Atem was a mage – one of the first things you learn as a mage is that  _ Words Mean Things _ .

Naming demons enabled you to trap them. Charms had to be pronounced right, or else they wouldn’t work. Nameless things were meaningless, and it was in the process of acknowledging that you made it real, solid and tangible.

If you can’t see it, touch it, smell it, does it exist? Can you name it and call it forth into the sunlight?

Nameless things were hidden away in darkness, meant to fester there until you took pity on them, and pulled them out into the light. Atem didn’t want his feelings to be locked away and he didn’t want Seto’s love for him to be a dark, secretive thing that grew in damp, dark places where you didn’t want to venture.

Atem wasn’t keen on turning himself into someone’s secret. Frankly, he believed he deserved better than that.

When Atem turned around and waltzed right out the door, he half expected that Seto would call out to him. He did not. Seto looked on at his retreating back and Atem pointedly did not look back at him, because if they were calling each other’s bluffs, Atem sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one cracking ten minutes into this.

So he left, a thundering, raging storm following his footsteps, anger and hurt boiling in his head, and the conviction that he was doing the right thing in the long run. Either Seto was going to admit his feelings, step on his stubborn pride and ask Atem to come back, or they cut each other off and be done with it.

Atem refused to do things in half-hearted, half-measures, and he didn’t want love that was too logical to admit its own madness or diminished itself by refusal to admit its very existence.

Plus, Seto loved him too, of that Atem was sure.  _ Seto loved him _ .

So Atem was gambling on that – Seto loved him, so he wouldn’t want to lose him.

How long can you even hold out in stubborn isolation when you  _ love _ someone?

* * *

3 –

Mokuba liked Atem.

Atem was like no one he’d ever met before – he was fiery and regal, but he exuded kindness and patience.

He was also a mage, which sounded scary at the beginning, given that Seto always talked about how magic users cannot be trusted. However, Atem was quick to dispel any mistrust Mokuba had in magic users, mainly because he showed them all the practical, fun ways you could use magic. Did you know you could make brooms sweep on their own? Atem clapped his hands and made cookies  _ appear _ , floating right in front of Mokuba’s nose.

Atem was also really,  _ really _ smart, like Seto levels of smart, because sometimes they argued over thick books, and paradoxes and philosophy. Mokuba tried to follow, but ultimately gave up after a couple of minutes and focused more on how Atem made pencils floats and papers scorch when he was arguing with Seto, because his mana control went a little wonky along with his emotions.

Sometimes Mokuba would walk into a room and he’d find things that were still slightly smoldering, but there were also the fun occasions when he’d walk into a room and he'd find all kinds of flowers blooming, coming straight out of the woodwork, and that was definitely pretty cool. Seto had the occasional pollen allergies, though, which was funny and also a bit sad, because his bedroom looked like a greenhouse in full bloom.

He grumbled a lot – Mokuba would have been more concerned about it, at some point he walked in on Seto kissing Atem and noticed how any droopy looking leaves or flowers instantly perked up. He decided it was cute and if Seto wanted to stop the allergies either he should accept Atem’s offer of casting a spell on him  _ (impossible, the mere thought of it sent him into a rage) _ or he could just stop kissing Atem _ (honestly, most likely not going to happen) _ . So Seto grumbled about the magic and got annoyed about the flowers, but Mokuba didn’t think his brother really minded  _ that _ much.

And Atem made his brother – not  _ soft _ , because nothing across time and space could ever make his brother  _ soft,  _ but Atem made him calmer. For all that they shouted at each other and argued and grumbled, whenever Atem was around, Seto kept him within reach, like his brother wanted the reassurance that he could reach out with his hands or tail or wings and just brush against Atem to feel him close.

There were those old stories that dragons hybrids had, the romantic ones that talked about mating bonds. Mokuba’s favorite was about  _ The Chaos and The Stabilizer  _ which was a shitty name for a romance, but it was also  _ so nice. _

It was a story about a roaring, raging dragon whose heart was full of anger and hurt. One day, the dragon stumbled into a realm of darkness, where he met a beautiful creature that dwelled in the shadows. Tendrils of darkness reached out to him and said,  _ Come to me. I’ll sooth the chaos in your heart if you banish the darkness from mine. _

It was what you said to your mate at your bonding ceremony, it was such a classically romantic story, they went on and named a constellation after it.

Mokuba thought it was really beautiful, this idea that your mate was supposed to be this never-ending source of calm, comfort and peace, that they were supposed to bring stability even to the most restless mind.

Dragons were notoriously mercurial and ill tempered, with passions running deep and hot. Hypersensitive senses also meant that a lot of times, the world around them were too sharp and too bright – smell too sensitive, sounds too loud, minds too bright. Sometimes it got overwhelming – that’s why so many dragons preferred the solitude of caves and castles hidden away in the woods. A mate was supposed to give you something to focus on, sooth you with their presence, their smell, their touch.

Mokuba knew his brother, how intensely he was in pain sometimes because his mind wouldn’t allow him any rest, because his senses were so sensitive, because everything was overexposed, like raw nerves and fresh skin under a scab. Mokuba had always wished that Seto would find a mate, because then he would have someone to help sooth him through it all.

So whenever Mokuba saw how Seto and Atem were wrapped up in each other, when he saw them brushing against each other, he felt a leap in his heart. His tail twitched and his wings flapped involuntarily. Seto finally found himself a  _ mate _ .

How awesome.

But then – something happened.

One day, Mokuba was sitting outside in the garden, enjoying a beautifully sunny day, when all of a sudden, the sky turned dark and moody. Thunder and lighting, howling winds, all of them descended on the castle. Mokuba ran back inside, only to see the broom fall that was sweeping by itself fall, charm lifted. A whole series of small bangs and explosions went off somewhere in the mansion, and before he knew what was happening, Atem was already running past him. Mokuba was too stunned to say anything – he wanted to yell after Atem, but it was too late to do that.

“What’s happening….?” He asked himself, and ran towards the back room.

He found Seto there, back ramrod straight and glaring holes into the furniture. His tail was coiled tightly around his leg and his wings were twitching and spasming.

“Seto?” he approached his brother and called out his name – once, twice, three times. He walked closer to Seto and grabbed his hand, which broke him out of this weird spell that settled over him.

“What happened with Atem, Seto?”

“Atem left.”

That’s all he said and he didn’t seem inclined to elaborate, so Mokuba pressed on.

“What do you mean, Atem left? Just like that? Did you have a fight? He can’t leave like that, doesn’t he know that….”

“ _ Mokuba _ .” His brother’s voice sounded so raw that anything else he wanted to say got stuck in his throat. He swallowed thickly and looked up at Seto – he couldn’t make eye contact, though, Seto was looking stubbornly ahead. 

“Seto, what happened?” But his brother didn’t answer, he just shook his head and walked away.

* * *

The smell was the worst part. Smell clung to anything and everything. The house, the air, the furniture, the rooms. Seto’s room, his bed, his sheets. Everything smelled like him, Seto thought Atem’s smell imbued itself into his very skin, wrote itself across his brain.

Atem had left him, but he was still –  _ everywhere.  _ His smell was.

Seto’s nose was always so damn sensitive, he could pick up on scents that were so much further away and isolate them precisely. It was an advantage when you had to hunt the occasional animal, definitely a bonus for picking up intruders that ventured on his territory.  _ Terrible inconvenience  _ at the moment, when everything had the scent of Atem clinging to it

Seto hated it – Atem left him, Atem left him alone, Atem did not love him, Atem was a damn liar. His mind knew that, had come to terms with it the second his so-called  _ mate _ turned around and left. It’s not like Seto ever expected some silly, overhyped emotion such as love to factor between the two of them, but Atem could have been smart about it and not  _ say it _ .

Not force it onto him.

Not put it in his face.

Not say words like  _ mating _ or  _ love _ or  _ marriage _ .

Lies that naïve children told each other.

_ Love _ .

What was that even supposed to be?

He loved Mokuba. His parents loved each other.

Seto decided that what he needed to do was to scrub away the smell of Atem from the house, inch by inch. He needed a lot of bleach for that, but he went out, got himself a ton of supplies and started scrubbing away at all the surfaces. Mokuba volunteered to help him, but usually his brother couldn’t stand more than a couple hours of scrubbing.

It was fine, it was better if he did it himself, he was extremely thorough, and he wanted to make sure he got everything.

Surfaces were easy, they were scrubbed until they were pristine and shiny. Sheets and curtains were boiled and bleached. The mattress he wanted to burn.

He wanted to purge Atem from his lair, like he purged himself from Seto’s head when he left.

It was his body that didn’t get the message, it was his senses – the animalistic part of his biology that still craved Atem.

He walked around the house and went about his day, completely normal, and then it hit him squarely in the guts and knocked the breath right out of his lungs. A deep-seated longing, wanting, missing, drowning in it, pain behind his ribs, so intense and deep. If there was a hook lodged into the beating, thumping muscle in his chest, that hook pulled at him and strained him taunt.

Pain was something he was familiar with, but this wasn’t pain. This was something else, painful but deeper, resonating in the core of him.

And every damn day, he kept asking himself, when was this all supposed to end?

The literature about Mate Bonding between dragons made the whole thing seem painfully romantic – One True Love, Bonding For Life, Completely Dedicated Monogamy, that sort of idealistic look into what was essentially a chemical bond created by strong hormonal responses. That kind of approach wasn’t helpful for Seto, it worked with the assumption that you lost your mate either through an unfortunate accidental separation and you had to endure it until they came back, or you were widowed.

Apparently, rare was the dragon that got separated from their mate  _ willingly _ and even rarer while they were in their Newly Bonded Phase. Frankly, most books seemed to assume that separating during the Newly Bonded Phase would be such a huge shock to the system, a young dragon hybrid would be constantly in intense physical pain and unbearable  _ grief _ . 

_ Tsk _ .

Well, they didn’t get the chance to meet Seto, obviously. He was absolutely  _ fine _ , apart from the occasional wave of mind-numbing intensity that made his eyes water and his chest clench, but those would definitely pass.

He just had to figure out when they would pass, how soon he could go back to normal. Normal, his old sort of normal, when normal was just him and Mokuba. They had been fine, they had been great, until Atem came around and decided to weasel his way inside his life, his house, his head, his lungs.

The air smelled like Atem, so he scrubbed everything with bleach until it didn’t. Then, after everything was perfectly sanitized and clear, then his lungs and his nose and his tongue started hurting, because nothing smelled like Atem anymore. He wanted to taste his skin again, and touch him, and feel him tightening around his cock.

Bonding worked like a drug, which meant that love was nothing more than the right intensity of dopamine. Nearly all addictive drugs, directly or indirectly, act upon the brain’s reward system by heightening dopaminergic activity.

Prolonged and abnormally high levels of dopamine in the synaptic cleft can induce receptor suppression in the neural pathway. The brain becomes accustomed to a certain dose of dopamine to feel pleasure, gets desensitized to anything weaker than that. Cutting off the supply means that you're left reeling, dizzy with pain you cannot explain,  _ craving _ .

It made sense to look at it like this – Atem was the external, artificial stimulant that acted upon his brain’s dopamine activity and the absence of him produced symptoms of withdrawal. Essentially, Atem presence fucked with his brain and fried his neural pathways, making it next to impossible to feel anything other than this  _ longing _ .

So he did the only logical thing he could do in this case – he started researching the effects of drugs and addictive behaviors on the brain, only to reach a better understanding of withdrawal. He wanted to know – how long would this last? 

A week, a month, two months, three? A year? How long did he have to endure this?

How long does it take to purge someone out of your system?

This wasn’t what he signed up for when they started fucking. The high of it wasn’t worth the drop, he told himself while he was sitting alone at night, and blamed Atem for putting him through the entirety of this situation.

“But Seto – It sounds to me  _ you told him to leave,  _ and he said….He’d come back if you wanted him to? Don’t you want him to come back? _ ” _

“Why would I want him to come back? Good riddance to him, I have more important things to do than worry about Atem’s feelings.”

That made Mokuba turn to look at him with sad eyes, and Seto wasn’t sure if it was because he missed Atem or he missed how convenient Atem was around the mansion. Maybe he should learn how to bake those cookies that Atem conjured out of thin air for Mokuba.

“But don’t you miss him? He was your  _ mate _ , wasn’t he?”

“You know how I feel about the entire concept of mates, Mokuba.”

“But I always thought that….”

“It’s needlessly complicated to involve a person so much in your life and happiness. You open yourself up for unpredictable chaotic elements.”

“Do you believe Atem was a chaotic element?”

“Atem was  _ chaos incarnate _ , Mokuba. He set things on fire randomly and spontaneously when he was angry, he made our furniture burst into flowers when he was happy. As a mage, he constantly refused to obey the laws of physics. Everything about Atem is especially designed to cause as much aggravation as possible.”

His voice was sure, impassioned and righteously angry. How dare he? Atem himself had come into his life, messed with his head, messed with his sense, messed with his sense of inner stability and then left. How dare he do something like that? He tipped Seto off balance and then acted as if he was supposed to be grateful for the disruption.

“But you seemed to be happy with him, Brother.”

“There’s really no point in talking about how things seemed to be, Mokuba. Atem left.”

His brother wasn’t satisfied to leave it at that, though, so much to Seto’s chagrin, Mokuba continued.

“I thought that was how you were supposed to look when…” But he bit back whatever he wanted to say. Seto sighed, turned to him and urged him to continue. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but on the other hand he felt it was fair to answer his brother’s questions. After all, he was the one that allowed Atem to grow in the empty spaces of the house, only to remove him afterwards

“You can finish whatever you want to say. Supposed to look when….?”

“When you’re in love, I guess.”

“Why would you ask me that?”

Mokuba shrugged.

“I guess I always wondered – it’s supposed to be so important for dragon hybrids, isn’t it? Having a mate, that is. And you can’t have a mate without being in love with them, so I wondered – I  _ know _ what your opinions about this are, Seto, I know you don’t believe it, but it’s supposed to be important for a reason, right?”

There was a silence between them for a few seconds. Seto wanted to open his mouth and say something, but Mokuba beat his to it –

“Mother and Father loved each other, didn’t they?”

And that hurt, intensely, because there was something in his brother’s voice that sounded a lot like longing and Seto had no idea how to deal with this. Because he knew what Mokuba longed for: that family that he never got the chance to experience.

No matter how close they were, how much Seto loved him and how much Mokuba loved him, no matter what bridges they would build to reach each other, there was always going to be this schism between them. 

Unbidden, memories that he tried to block out of his mind bubbled up at the forefront of his consciousness. He remembered his father, with tears running down his face, bent over his mother’s dead body.

_ Don’t leave me _ , he had pointlessly asked her,  _ don’t leave me here alone _ .

But she was never going to wake up, no matter how much his father kept asking. He kept repeating the words throughout the night, full of desperation and grief. Looking back at it now, Seto should have known that his father wouldn’t be able to move on from that.

The only answer he could give to Mokuba was that  _ yes, their parents loved each other _ . It also meant that  _ love _ , abstract and philosophic concept that it was….Love was branded in his head with his father’s desperate pleas,  _ Don’t leave me here alone _ . Love was that thing that made his father want to follow his wife in death, because he couldn’t stand to be alone without her.

There was a moment in which his chest felt heavy, pressure building inside and unable to burst. His eyes stung, so rubbed at them roughly.

That kind of love was something Seto had picked apart and analyzed to the bare chemistry of it, and he still couldn’t understand it.

_ I love you. _

What does that even mean?

Atem dared to say so easily and flippantly, he just threw it right into Seto’s face like it was nothing. And then he  _ left. _

Did Atem want him to chase after him? Was he supposed to ask him to stay?

Seto couldn’t do that.

And Atem  _ couldn’t _ love him. If Atem had loved him, he wouldn’t have left.

* * *

Atem explained magic to Seto as if it was as simple as manipulating atoms. He tried to make it sound scientific.

Seto tried to remember that and keep the explanations at the back of his head.

Magic tingled and sizzled over his skin, he felt it gripping the very essence of him and pulled him forward towards something he couldn’t perceive. Before he wrapped his mind properly around what was happening, his body was starting to feel weak, he was lightheaded, and the world turned dark and tipped over in front of him.

When he came back to himself, his nose was inundated with the smell of Atem, Atem,  _ Atem _ .

_ Atem _ ?

Seto jumped and tried to sit up, but his wingspan and his height wouldn’t be accommodated by the… _ bubble _ (?) he seemed to be trapped in. Sure enough, he wasn’t at home, he couldn’t sit up properly because he was in a sort of encasement, his senses were screaming from Atem, but his mind was screaming danger.

“Stop struggling, Seto. The Summoning Circle was a bit too small for you.” Definitely Atem, and he sounded apologetic too, and Seto looked over his shoulder from where the voice came from.

Atem was still as short and as breathtakingly gorgeous as he remembered, but the look on his face was a combination of petulance and sheepishness. His body was pumping adrenaline for all sorts of reasons, but considering it was Atem in front of him, his traitorous instincts allowed him to relax.

“What’s going on?” He asked and struggled to keep his voice from hitching on the words. He swallowed tightly and glared at Atem for good measure, ignored the way in which his heart was stuttering in his chest.

It seemed like it took some time for Atem to register his question, he looked at Seto with this  _ face.  _ It was a split second when it was hard to breathe, because Atem was looking at him in a way that Seto couldn’t name.

Didn’t want to name.

Then, it passed, the moment passed, Atem crossed his hands over his chest and stuck up his nose.

“I summoned you. I thought it might be too embarrassing to face me.” Atem said, voice haughty and preachy, “So I’m making it easier for you to apologize to me.”

“What did you say to me?” Seto’s voice boomed. He tried to straighten his back and his height as an advantage to loom over Atem, but he bumped his head against the invisible barrier set by the too small summoning circle.

“Apologize to me.” Atem demanded, high pitched and angry. “I brought you here so you could apologize to me, you  _ coward _ .”

“Coward? You’re the one that walked away from me!”

“You coward _ , you let me walk away _ . You let me walk away and then you didn’t even  _ try _ to contact me. For a month! You let me leave and then you didn’t even try to contact me!”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know you  _ wanted  _ to be contacted?”

“ _ Seto, you idiot.  _ I  _ told you  _ I wanted you to ask me to stay.”

“You  _ left _ .”

“Would you have called me back?”

Atem’s voice did crack at that, hurt, angry, righteous. His eyes were bright and mesmerizing in a way that made it hard to concentrate on anything else. He stared at him a little too deeply, too caught, missed him too much, maybe….

“You left. Why should I chase after you?”

He didn’t want to talk about this. His head was throbbing. Atem was too close and he was too far away.

“Seto, do you not understand how this works? You chase after someone because you love them. Because they love you and you want to be with them. You were supposed to ask me to come back, because I love you and you hurt me by denying it”

“Stop saying that! Stop saying that.” Voice panting. His heart was racing. His heart  _ hurt _ as well, because Atem was forcing this conversation and he didn’t want to say it but he couldn’t  _ stop _ . “If you loved me you wouldn’t have left me, you wouldn’t have forced me to…” Seto closed his mouth so fast he bit his tongue in the process.

There was something that changed in the air between then, like the atoms were sparkling and crackling a second ago, ready to ignite in even more yelling, but all of a sudden it went still. Atem’s face changed, the hard lines of his frown softened, his jaw relaxed.

“You thought I didn’t love you.”

He refused to look at Atem’s face anymore and focused somewhere above his head. There was a tight knot of screams and yells and sobs that was perched right at the edge of his windpipe and waiting for him to crack and spill across the floor.

“You’re not supposed to leave if you love someone.”

“There’s no rules to loving someone, Seto. It doesn’t work like that _. _ ” Atem’s voice was soothing, firm but gentle, and he took a step forward, closer, closer.

Seto closed his eyes and willed his body into listening to him.

“Then how does it work, if you’re so knowledgeable about it.”

“I think it’s really easy to determine, actually. It’s between how you feel for someone and how they make you feel. You just  _ know _ one moment that you love them and then you work from there.”

“You just  _ know _ .” Seto repeated, petty and mocking in the face of Atem’s earnestness. There was a churning feeling in his stomach, all painful and twisting, when he said, “How are you so sure that  _ you know _ .”

Atem chuckled and stepped even closer, it was so hard to focus on anything that wasn’t the smell of him, the presence of him.

“I just know. I’ve known that I loved for a while now and I know you love me too.”

It was unfair, it was so unfair that Atem got to step so close to him and reach out a hand to touch Seto’s face. His fingers ghosted over Seto’s jaw, feather-light and sweet, and Seto couldn’t run away, he couldn’t pull away, he couldn’t even stand to put distance between them.

“You entitled brat, why must you presume to understand things about me?”

“Because I know you by now, Seto.”

“ _ Liar _ .”

“No. I’m not a liar. You’re the one lying to himself, Seto. You deny so many things about yourself, yet…”

Atem’s fingers were tracing over his cheek bones, over the bridge of his nose.

His hands fisted tightly, he kept his spine straight and struggled to breathe to his mouth. This close, he could feel warmth coming off Atem’s body.

How inviting that was, how he wanted to touch him.

“I don’t want to force you to open up for me, Seto, if you don’t want to.” Atem pressed his fingertips against the thin skin underneath Seto’s eyes, “If you’re not ready, so be it, I’ll leave you alone now and I’ll be sad, but we’ll both meet later, when you will be – in this life or the next one.”

He felt his lungs give in at that, collapse into themselves and into the mess of knots and cuts and shards that was already inside his ribcage. He heard Atem chuckle, felt a kiss pressing to the crown of his head.

“But Seto, I  _ know  _ you. When you look at me and touch me, I know you want me with you.”

His eyelids hurt with how tightly he was pressing them closed. Atem’s hand cradled the back of his head, and he was combing through Seto’s hair, gentle and soothing, and his world was narrow and warm and bright.

Atem made everything seem hazy around him, because he was so bright and mesmerizing, and stood out against a backdrop of dull monotony. His absence had been unbearable, because nothing  _ felt right  _ anymore _ ,  _ all of it was less substantial, less real, less bright, less sharp, just  _ less _ .

Less than Atem.

He shivers and then bends forward under the pressure, forehead pressing against Atem’s chest. He wants the ground to open up beneath him and swallow him up. He opened his eyes but all he’s looking at is the soft fabric of Atem’s shirt.

He thinks,  _ I’m not a coward _ .

He fisted a handful of purple fabric in his hand and pulled at Atem’s shirt, looked up at him and met those beautiful eyes of his.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“Then I won’t.” Atem smiled and sighed the words, soft and breathy.  _ Relieved. _

But Seto was shaking, inside, in his bones and his muscles, he was shaking and he had no idea why.

He wanted to say that Atem didn’t understand, he didn’t  _ understand _ what that meant, but he couldn’t even begin to say the words. Couldn’t, wouldn’t, shouldn’t, because who knows what would come out of his mouth. 

Atem grabbed him by the wrists and raised Seto’s hands to his face. He nuzzled against his palms, skin still as soft and warm as it had been a month ago before they fought. He felt Atem’s smile with his fingertips.

“Touch me, Seto, why won’t you touch me?”

There was so much need and want coursing through him, it was rumbling in his chest, growling against his vocal cords.

He kissed Atem painfully, too much force and too much desperation, pulled him into his lap and wanted to smother him against his chest. Atem was lite and slender and elegant, but in Seto’s arms he was suddenly a heavy, comforting weight that had been missing from him like a limb.

“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,”

Atem’s fingers were in his hair, tugging sharply at his scalp, and he was biting kisses over Seto’s lips, his cheeks, his jaw,

“How dare you let me miss you like that?”

Atem sounded whiny and entitled and needy, chastising him between kisses and licks and bites, squirming in Seto’s lap, wanting to get closer and Seto wanted to pull him closer, wanted to steal him away and never let he out, ever, why did he ever let Atem go in the first place?

“Why did you leave in the first place?” A growl, a bite, a gasp, “And why are you still wearing clothes? Atem, you’re wearing too many clothes.”

It was so frustrating to deal with clothes, he wanted to feel Atem’s skin across his.

“You’re supposed to undress me, so it’s your fault.”

Atem laughed against his mouth, and his laugh was just as enticing as ever, it went through Seto’s veins, straight to his heart, to his brain.

Maybe it was Seto’s fault for thinking he could ever control the sparks, the sparks that flew between the two since the beginning. At some point he miscalculated something – his own volatile nature and Atem’s ability to burn through him.

When he felt Atem’s naked skin against his, he could barely keep himself from sobbing.

Atem was so beautiful, with his bronze skin and gemstone eyes and gold jewelry hanging from his earlobes and against his collarbones and around his wrists and ankles. He radiated warmth, he sighed and sobbed and mewled shamelessly when Seto touched him.

It was all “ _ Touch me more _ ” and “ _ Kiss me more _ ”, and “ _ Yes, like that, don’t stop, Seto, don’t stop _ ”.

Seto thought he might have forgotten how Atem skin tasted, how delicious he was, how much he enjoyed feeling him against his taste buds. He made Atem sit on his knees in front of him, so he could leave open mouthed kisses over the dips and knots of his spine, so he could press his tongue flat against his balls, so he could lick his open. Seto made Atem come in hand, so he could lick it off his fingers afterwards.

Atem’s thighs were shaking when he turned on his back – his knees were red and raw from kneeling on the floor and there was chalk on his skin, where the runes and symbols he drew for the Summoning circle rubbed off on him. His pupils were blown out and his eyelashes heavy, his mouth was red and plump and wet, but he was smiling at Seto.

Struggling to catch his breath and fucking  _ glowing _ , Atem was inviting and impossible to resist in his post-orgasm haze. Seto’s breath was knocked out of him by this intense wave of warmth and wonder and awe, by the realization that Atem was like that because of him, for him, because Seto made him feel like that, because Atem’s body responded to him like that,  _ because of him _ .

He was never quite prepared for it, for how this thing swelled inside when he looked at Atem sometimes.

Atem was looking at him  _ like that _ , and then he was laughing, bright and happy and content. Seto was confused about the sudden mirth, but Atem only shook his head and opened his arms in invitation.

“Seto, Seto, come here. Come here, I want to kiss you.”

“I want to do more than kiss you, Atem.” But he went, he let Atem wrap his arms over his shoulders, wrap his legs around Seto’s middle.

“Tell me what you’re feeling.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you’re feeling, Seto, right now. What are you feeling?” And he was full of laughter and smoldering heat, and he was looking at Seto as if he understood some greater natural wonder that Seto was still struggling with.

Seto frowned, annoyed and confused – his skin was alive with want, his blood was roaring and his cock wanted to fuck Atem. However, the object of his desires seemed to be in the mood to play games.

“Humor me, Seto. Tell me – what are you feeling right now?” Atem tightened his legs against Seto’s middle, encouraging him to rock against him.

It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough to just rut against him like that, he wanted more – he’d had Atem so many times already, but it was never enough to soothe the desperate edge of hunger he felt for him. Seto thought it would never be enough, nothing could really be enough to sate this, whatever  _ this _ was.

“I want to fuck you, Atem, what else do you think I’m feeling?”

“Then fuck me. What were you waiting for?” There was a challenging smirk on his lips, like it was obvious, like Seto was the one stalling.

Seto growled in frustration, put his open palm against Atem’s throat, and felt his pulse fluttering.

He wanted to be a little bit cruel sometimes, because Atem was infuriating and Seto was petty and vengeful, and sometimes he had wanted to hurt him a little, but –  _ but _ .

Atem’s body was  _ so _ welcoming. He opened for him easily and sighed and his eyelashes fluttered closed, and all thoughts in his head were replaced with this intense need to  _ give.  _ He wanted to give Atem anything and everything he could ever want or need.

He wanted to give Atem everything that was in his power to give – to shower him in diamonds and gold, to conquer a castle or a city or a damn country in his name. He would find a way to do that.

“You can’t leave me again; I won’t let you.” His muscles were shaking with tension, he was moving inside of Atem, but it felt like Atem had set his brain on fire.

“You’re mine”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, tell me you’re mine.”

“I’m yours, I’m yours, to have and keep and fuck.  _ Seto _ , I’m…”

Atem body was open and giving and coming undone, unraveling at the seams.

You never really touch anything, you always touch atoms.

It was a fine dance of matter, between repelling and attracting atoms, it gave the illusion of touch, the feeling, but it was never real. There was always something, always a barrier, always something that stood in the way – but his rational brain was blazing, wild with need and want, and there was only this certainty echoing there, that Atem and him really did touch. Whatever Seto  _ was,  _ beneath skin and flesh and bones and cells and atoms, whatever he was that made him Seto, he could reach out and touch Atem on the same frequency. 

“Seto, Seto, Seto, tell me you’re mine, too.” 

And he looked at Seto like he understood, like he knew Seto.

He was perfect, Atem was  _ perfect _ . Seto gripped him by his wild, messy hair and pulled his face close, kissed wet and sloppy. He tasted the moans out of his mouth and pressed his forehead against Atem’s. They were looking at each other, he was staring into Atem’s eyes, wanting the soul-baring intimacy that connection forced between them.

“ _ Seto _ ,  _ tell me _ ,” Atem whined, moaned, arched against him and Seto felt drunk on power.

“I’m yours.” It was so hard to think that voice belonged to him, it was so desperate, “I’m yours and you’re mine and I…”

He couldn’t say anything else, couldn’t think about anything else, he sunk his teeth into the flesh of Atem’s shoulder. Atem gasped, shuddered beneath him, and his body tightened, tightened around Seto’s cock as he was coming, and…

And...

Maybe it was as cliché as that.

Maybe that whole meaning Seto had been looking for, maybe it really was  _ this _ .

The Classical meaning and the Theological and the Philosophical meaning, the one that poets wrote about and the ones that were discussed in the labs and were made up of Serotonin and Dopamine, the lust and the beauty and the anger and the despair of love, all of it, the full fucking spectrum of anguish and desire and sound and fury and silence –

Atem was running his fingers through Seto’s hair, he was drawing runes over his skin, he was making these soft, soothing noises, murmuring nonsense into Seto’s skin.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here, I’m here.”

He felt raw, scraped out and exposed, like Atem was too much, like Atem broke him apart and put him back together. Seto felt cheated out – why was he feeling  _ so vulnerable _ ? Why couldn’t he stop shaking?

“It’s okay, Seto, I know, I  _ know _ .”

Any other time, he would have laughed at that, he would have shot back something snarky –  _ What can you possibly know? _

However, this time there was nothing to say, there was nothing he could say because he didn’t trust what would come out of his mouth, so he didn’t say anything. The wild part was that he was certain Atem  _ knew _ , maybe he felt this too, but he was just better dealing with it.

* * *

After a full month of storms, bad weather, and bad luck, Domino was a complete whiplash change natural phenomenon happening over the course of roughly one hour.

The skies cleared, warm sunlight streaming happily across clear blue skies, complete with birdsong and flowers bursting into full bloom on previously barren tree branches.

People thought that whatever hex or spell had plagued them over the course of a month finally lifted, they dared to poke their heads out and see the beautiful, perfect spring day.

What’s more, a whole lot of people suddenly found themselves having the best day  _ ever _ – everyone’s coffee was  _ Just Perfect _ , they found out their favorite jeans still fit  _ Perfectly _ , their bacon was perfectly crisps, their workday pleasant and fulfilling. More so, it was also a day in which an abnormal number of people won the lottery.

Jounouchi was one of them.

“I just don’t understand, Yugi.  _ Everyone _ won the lottery. Everyone that entered had the lucky numbers.”

“Aw, that sounds amazingly good luck, Jounouchi,”

“It means we all won about 3000 yen.” Jounouchi said, sighing disappointedly. “But at least it’s not raining anymore.”

“Does this mean Atem made up with his dragon boyfriend?” Anzu asked.

“I believe it does, yes.” And God, it was about time. Yugi had spent the past month waterproofing things, on top of the usual fireproofing, because Atem’s bad mood meant that they were in constant danger of flooding.

It had been raining everywhere around Domino, but it had also been raining  _ inside _ the magic shop, because Atem took his bad mood with him wherever he was. Quite frankly, Yugi was tired of casting water-repellant spells on thighs, he really did hope Atem and Seto wouldn’t fight that bad again in the near future.

Dealing with heartbroken dark mages wasn’t fun at all.

He bought ice-creams for Anzu and himself, while Jounouchi still complained about how useless his lottery win was.

“They’ll be fine, though, I bet, but I do wonder….”

“What is it, Anzu?”

“I can understand the storms and the occasional fine, Atem’s a dark mage, after all, but….” She gestured around towards the blooming trees, the flowers, the unexplainable good fortune. “This isn’t dark magic, isn’t it? And he used to say that he has no talent for healing and white magic at all, so I just wonder what triggered Atem’s sudden abilities to do these things.”

Yugi’s blush was deeply bright red, and Anzu noticed, because she was smart like that. She also had an uncanny ability to ask very good and pertinent questions, which was always appreciated, but sometimes it made Yugi uncomfortable to answer them. She gave him this  _ look. _

“You know all those books about magical rituals we have in the shop? You know how a lot of them are in the NSFW section?”

There was a pause between them.

“ _ Oh _ .” 

**Author's Note:**

> Yo - hit me up on [tumblr](https://amalysstuff.tumblr.com/) or on discord at Amalysstuff#4353 . Slide into my DMs. I like moonlit walks on the beach, long conversations about smut and feels, piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.


End file.
